What Is Hardwood Floor Cupping

Cupping means that the wood that is raised on the edges of each individual floor board.

What is hardwood floor cupping.

When the moisture increases the wood swells and then when it decreases the wood shrinks. How to fix cupped hardwood floors. Wood is hygroscopic so it gains or loses moisture in your home seasonally. The cupping is due to some type of moisture imbalance in the wood flooring itself.

5 tips to prevent hardwood floor cupping this summer. But what is hardwood floor cupping. Any wood floor can suffer from cupping. It ends up looking a little like an accordion.

Homeowners take pride in their wood floors. 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. How to fix cupped hardwood flooring. 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 dry or wet wood floors can be caused by humidity lack of humidity temp water. It s surprising how quickly some people can point out a hardwood floor that is not flat and if you. 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. 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. Cupping is a result of the changes in moisture in the room. Flooring that is installed before the structure is fully enclosed may cup. Creating cupping below is a solid board that started at a normal moisture content 8.

See the picture at the top of this post for an example of a cupped floor. The wood flooring subsequently crowned when it dried out and had to be replaced even though it was a new floor. Failure to properly performing testing of concrete or wood substrate prior to installation of the hardwood. 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 planks that make up wood flooring expand and contract based on the amount of moisture in the room. 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.