wood floor…water damage…still wet

[mwiseman]

I walked into my home office this morning and found a big “lump” under my carpeting. Examining my carpeting I realized my wife had steam cleaned my 4×6 throw rug while it was ON THE HARDWOOD…it then stayed there over night absorbing moisture from the rug.

Now I have a 18″ x 12″ bubble in the hardwood.

Can anyone provide some constructive next steps advice?

Use a Hair dryer to dry the wood?
Call a restoration service?
Leave it alone and it’ll fix itself?

Not sure what to do here.

MW

[tomh]

I haven’t dealt with this, I’m not suggesting this is expert advise. I would weight the floor and let it dry naturally. Corn starch or talc might help the drying process and help the floor ease back into line. Good luck

[itsreallyconcrete]

the 1st time i left & she got the house 🙂

my current bride, nazgilla, has done the same,,, we call’d a carpenter as naggie’s worth keeping 🙂

itsreallyconcrete.com
decorative conc artisan
conc repairs

[1discontinuedfloor]

I can say your floor should not have failed over night unless she really left that rug REALLY wet. Regardless, get a floor fan/ blower and run it in that room. You could run a dehumidifier in there, but if you do you can pull moisture out of the unaffected areas and cause gapping between boards. I would use the fan, and maybe crank down your a/c or lower your humidistat if your home is so equipped. Once it is dry you can probably fix the hollow spot yourself if it is just a hollow spot, and boards are not buckled. IF it is a hollow spot, you can purchase a Dri-Tac repair kit. First,you will drill a couple of very small holes in the floor with the supplied bit.You need at least two holes.The kit also has a bottle of liquid adhesive, a syringe, and some small dowels.
You will fill the syringe with adhesive and inject the floor with it through one of the holes; the other hole is a vent. Once you have filled the void between the sub-floor and flooring, you take a piece of dowel and sharpen one end with a razor knife.
No need to make it sharp, you just want it slightly narrower than the holes in the floor. Tap it in each hole with a hammer (Lightly) no deeper than the thickness of the flooring itself. Plug both holes this way. Use a nail set to sink the dowel slighly below the face of the flooring,place some weight on top of the area you just injected for 24-48 hours depending on the volume of the void you just filled. Finally go to your local home improvement store and purchase some finishing putty to match your floors. Take your wife out to dinner with the money you just saved, and hide the steam vac when she goes to sleep. Note: You may have to go to a real flooring store to get the Dri-Tac repair kit, or you may find it online. It should cost you about $50-$75 to complete the repair this way. If the floors are buckled, you will need an expert, unless you are a skilled craftsman.

Robert Knupp
DiscontinuedFloors.com

[Author]

Posts