Wood Floor Expansion

Here s a brief primer on what s normal for a wood floor as well as how to avoid any true moisture damage.

Wood floor expansion.

When you ve selected hardwood flooring for your home you ve purchased a living product. A dry subfloor plus correct flooring mc plus a lot of fasteners equals the best wood floor performance. Many of the sales associates in big box retail centers do not have the training or experience to assist the home handyman in the proper installation of hardwood flooring they make the assumption that gaps between walls and the. Expansion and contraction is to be expected in a natural product like hardwood flooring.

Luckily getting ahead of the material and calculating wood shrinkage and expansion is fairly easy all you need to do is multiply three numbers together. Conversely when air moisture levels decrease moisture content evaporates shrinkage occurs. Wood movement can ruin a seemingly well constructed project. The expansion gap should be around the whole perimeter of the room wherever the flooring may be against fixed objects such as walls doorways radiator pipes and fireplaces.

Measure the board s width. Here s how to find them. These spaces are to be expected and usually close up as the season changes and moisture returns to the air. Breaks can be placed in doorways between rooms or hallways and can be hidden or maintained by using basic t type expansion moldings.

Are expansion gaps necessary for solid and engineered wood flooring. The short answer to this question is yes. To reduce the degree of change homeowners can add moisture to the air during the dry months ideally by installing a humidifier in the. Although engineered wood flooring is more resistant to expansion and contraction than solid wood it is still important to leave an expansion gap when installing an engineered wood floor.

An expansion gap is a term used when fitting wooden flooring. It is an essential gap that must be left around the edge of the room when fitting hardwood bamboo or laminate flooring. Expansion gaps should be left wherever the floor comes up against a fixed object for example next to a wall a doorway or a heating pipe. The simple fact is that when wood flooring is exposed to excessive moisture the floor will cup even if left with a quarter of a mile of expansion space.

Hardwood flooring and laminate flooring are not installed using the same guidelines of expansion and contraction. Expansion takes place and the hardwood grows for lack of a clearer term across the grain or width of the plank see below not all will react this way. A general rule of thumb is that you should allow 1cm to 1 5cm expansion gap all around the room and wherever there is a fixed object.