Hardwood is the best option for installing a floor in your buildings. However, you should ensure that your hardwood floor installation weddington nc withstands all weather conditions to avoid damage or other problems. As a building owner, you should protect your hardwood floor from certain risks. This is because high moisture during the winter season can affect your flooring that is built with hardwood materials. Therefore, you should know how moisture can impact your hardwood floors with more attention.
How moisture can affect your hardwood flooring?
1. Your flooring may experience cracks
Cracking is one of the common problems that occur on your hardwood floor due to expansion and contraction. High moisture levels can weaken your floor and it becomes brittle. Apart from this, your floor may expand tremendously and cause neighboring boards to crack. You should check cracks on your floor and implement preventive measures to avoid the problems.
2. Splitting
High moisture levels can lead to splits or splinters in your wood. Therefore, you should check whether your hardwood flooring experiences any splitting problems because it can result in breakage that will affect the integrity of the wood. Another thing is that it allows more water to enter your floor which makes the situation very worse.
3. Gapping
Gapping is a major problem that occurs in your floor resulting in shrinkage. You will notice that gaps can appear between wood planks and the hard floor will expand when the moisture levels increase. However, most gaps will close up again by filling themselves in.
4. Cupping
Cupping is another problem that will occur on your hardwood floor. It makes the edge of your planks higher than the center. In other words, you can see that the middle of a floor is lower than its edges. The problem is mainly caused by excess humidity which occurs below the basement or crawlspace.
5. Crowning
When your hardwood floor experience wet for long hours with sand, it will lead to crowning problems. You can notice the issue when the middle of your wood flooring is higher than its edges. It is opposite to cupping and happens when the floor surface encounters moisture.
6. Buckling
Bucking is one of the problems that can occur in your floor which leads to expansion and pulls away your floor from the subfloor. You should know how to prevent the problem from various problems that will help enhance your floor conditions to a large extent.