I”m building a house in the Cheasepeake Bay. The house is on a crawl space and I want to put down wide plank flooring. I have heard that cupping could be a problem. Any thoughts thanks.
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Properly dried wide plank flooring is a wonderful design statement. It does need to be properly installed to ensure it won't cup. what causes cupping (assuming it was properly dried) is either lack of fasteners or planks installed too close together. Wood swell when it absorbs moisture from the air (during high humidity periods and such) when it does it needs someplace to go to and if the boards are already tightly jammed together the only place to go is up thus it cups..
The absolute perfect way to install wide plank flooring is to do so during the highest humidity period you experiance. then you can jam the boards together because they won't swell any more than that and as they dry out and shrink the gap between boatds will always be the smallest possible..
If you get quarter sawn planks the expansion due to swelling almost completely disappears..
While frenchy is right about fastening and curing being highly important, if no moisture gets to the planks, then they will niot try to swell. Controlling moisture, and its effects on the planks is your primary concern.
Since your l;ocation is apt to be damp at some times of the year, you ned to keep that mioisture from entering the hosue, and from entering the wood.
First line of defense is a moisture stop on the ground under the house so ground water is less likely to migrate.
Second is a vapour barrier as part of your underfloor insulation package. Best bet would be a poly foam sprayed under tyhe floor for bnoth insulation and VB
Third line of defense is to back seal all six sides of your planks before laying them, but that happens only after they are properly cured. Use a poly or shellac. This will slow or prevent airborne moisture from enterin the wood.
What causes cupping or curling is when one side of the plank absorbs moistures faster or exudes it slower than the opposite side of the board. moisture expands the volumn of the wood. So if one side gets damp while the other stays dry, the dry side will display the cup. To see it happen, take a short plank and lay it out on damp grass ona sunny day. The sun will dry the surface, while th eback absorbs the dew, so you will have a drastic display by lunchtime.
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