Hardwood Floor Cupping

The cupping is due to some type of moisture imbalance in the wood flooring itself.

Hardwood floor cupping.

In fact in some cases exact opposite situations create wood floor cupping in a solid versus an engineered. Failure to properly performing testing of concrete or wood substrate prior to installation of the hardwood. Moisture affects solid wood floors and engineered wood floors in slightly difference ways. Wood floor business has a great article that breaks down the difference which you can read by clicking here.

How to fix cupped hardwood flooring. When the moisture increases the wood swells and then when it decreases the wood shrinks. But what is hardwood floor cupping. Flooring that is installed before the structure is fully enclosed may cup.

The general effect is easy to demonstrate by putting a small strip of paper onto a small drop of water. The planks that make up wood flooring expand and contract based on the amount of moisture in the room. This imbalance could either be moisture from the concrete environmental conditions in the space being to dry and drying out the top of the wood and or a wood floor that wasn t properly acclimated to the environment prior to installation. Moisture is at 4 5.

Cupping is a result of the changes in moisture in the room. Cupping in solid wood floors. Cupping occurs in solid wood flooring as a result of an elevated mc in the bottom of the flooring compared with the mc of the face. The paper will curl up away from the water.

I called the company who installed the floor and they said the moisture level was too high. It refers to a state when the individual wood planks appear to be higher on the edges as compared to the center of the board forming the shape of a cup. Whenever there is too much moisture the wood expands.