Repair and Prevention of Buckling Floors

A floor that buckles makes me think of indoor frost heaves. Although frost heaves are a winter phenomenon, floors can buckle in any season.

Like frost heaves, buckling floors often stem from exposure to moisture (including flooding).

A major cause of buckling floors is poor installation. Perhaps a subfloor that wasn’t properly leveled or improper or floors were improperly nailed down. Inadequate pressure on tiles to ensure that they adhere to the bonding agent could have taken place. Or maybe things were rushed and the boards or tiles didn’t have time to acclimate to the temperature and humidity within the building.

In addition, if a tile floor was laid with old or dusty tiles, it is likely that the bonding agent was compromised by the brittleness or the dust. If the bonding agent loses its grip, the tiles will buckle. Different subfloors require different bonding agents; the wrong or low-quality bonding agent on a subfloor will lead to buckling. If a weak bonding agent shrinks, it creates hollow areas between the subfloor and the tiles, which eventually buckle.

There are preventative measures to keep your floor from bucking! Getting a moisture reading on the floor before installation, more room in the expansion gaps, proper insulation and bonding materials, and precision installation make all the difference.

If your wood or tile floor has buckled, WORKS by Jesse DeBenedictis has the expertise to correct the underlying problem and restore your floor to its original beauty, as the photo shows. Please contact us.

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