Problems With Tongue & Groove Flooring

Gaps

• Gaps can occur in your floor at different seasons of the year. In the hot, humid days, the wood will absorb too much moisture. This will cause your tongue and groove floor to expand in certain places so that they seem to pop out in the seams. This can also happen in the winter if you have the house too hot and dry. The boards will shrink in some places, leaving gaps.

Cupping

• If the sides of the boards in your floor are curling up toward the middle, forming a cup, you have a problem with moisture on its underside. First, you have to find the source for this extra moisture and eliminate it. Maybe, there is a leak somewhere or the sub-floor is not doing its job of maintaining an equilibrium between dryness and wetness. Sometimes, just fixing the problem will alleviate this, but if the problem is severe, you are going to have to replace those portions of your floor.

Squeaking

• As your floor ages, it will shrink and expand according to the seasons and the indoor climate. You know you have a problem when you step on certain sections of your floor, and it squeaks. This is caused over time when there is swelling and shrinkage, which in turn, causes the tongue to separate from the groove in places along the boards. Squeaks can be fixed simply enough but will recur if precautions are not taken, like using a humidifier.

Warping

• If your tongue and groove hardwood floors have been exposed to excessive moisture, the boards will swell in some places and shrink in others. The result will be a hilly floor terrain instead of a smooth expanse of beautiful hardwood grains. Sometimes, you will not notice this happening until a few years after installation, even though the problem may have begun then.

Problem-Free Tongue and Groove Flooring

• You can attain the same beauty and quality of a hardwood tongue and groove floor without having to deal with these problems by replacing your old tongue and groove hardwood floors with laminate tongue and groove flooring. Laminates are not hardwoods, but composites and resins that are moisture-resistant and impervious to extremes in temperature.