I’ve got a 1928 house with oak hardwood floors that are warping (for lack of a better word). In a few places the wood is slanted up at the seam. If I stand on it, it goes down, but not completely. I thought it was just the humidity, but it happens in cold weather as well.
What would be the best way to fix this? I’ve heard about screws that you can use from above and the head snaps off when it has been screwed all the way into the subfloor. Would this work? Or is it better to repair from below (which I can do because it’s on the first floor and I have a basement)?
Thanks,
Michael
Replies
Are you describing cupping? That's often caused by moisture expanding the underside of the board. Can you get a moisture meter probe into the flooring? If there's a big differential between the top and the bottom, you'll have to allow the underside to dry. Once it's stable, it may need to be sanded.
Odd story...in the normal course of events, wood doesn't start moving after 80 years unless somethings changed...the floors getting wet somehow....
That said, we had a very strange thing happen at the local YMCA..
a bunch of the staff were playing b-ball late Sunday night....no one else there...locked up, came in the next morning and one corner of the gym floor had swelled so much it had split & lifted a foot into the air....
I saw it on a Tuesday....the boards were open enough for me to stick my head in, and sniff & feel the slab...absolutely no evidence of standing water!
The spot where the floor lifted was both under a ceiling mounted, water fed heater, and next to an exterior wall with a hose bib directly outside...no evidence was ever found that either of those were the culprit...
The insurance company sent engineers, who (I heard) reported that the floor had been laid without enough expansion gap....but it was laid 30 years ago!!!
The whole floor got replaced by insurance, and to my knowledge no one ever did come up with a good explanation of why it lifted...I would have been real leery of replacement before I had identified the cause.
One of those Twilight Zone things, I guess.