What Is Hardwood Floor Cupping

The center of the board dips below the edges.

What is hardwood floor cupping.

The planks that make up wood flooring expand and contract based on the amount of moisture in the room. The cupping is due to some type of moisture imbalance in the wood flooring itself. 5 tips to prevent hardwood floor cupping this summer. Homeowners take pride in their wood floors.

Wood is hygroscopic so it gains or loses moisture in your home seasonally. How to fix cupped hardwood floors. Wood flooring that is installed prior to the hvac system being installed may result in wood floor cupping. Cupping dry or wet wood floors can be caused by humidity lack of humidity temp water.

If you imagine a picture of a child drawing a boat in the water then the water will give you a good idea of what a cupped floor looks like. How our 950 moisture meter works is it has a hygrometer built in to read temp humidity and calculates your the emc equilibrium moisture content of what your wood floor. It s surprising how quickly some people can point out a hardwood floor that is not flat and if you. It ends up looking a little like an accordion.

But what is hardwood floor cupping. Whenever there is too much moisture the wood expands. The simplest way to think of wood floor cupping is to imagine the edges of each plank sticking up higher than the centers. 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.

Cupping is a result of the changes in moisture in the room. When the moisture increases the wood swells and then when it decreases the wood shrinks. Any wood floor can suffer from cupping. Let s face it no matter if you installed a light colored oak hardwood floor a darker toned cherry wood floor or something in between like hickory you want your floors to look good.

The wood flooring subsequently crowned when it dried out and had to be replaced even though it was a new floor. 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. How to fix cupped hardwood flooring. Flooring that is installed before the structure is fully enclosed may cup.

See the picture at the top of this post for an example of a cupped floor. This makes the wood appear to be in a u shape.