Timber Floor Cupping

They bow inward resembling the bowl of a spoon or the inside of a cup.

Timber floor cupping.

Water vapor emissions from concrete. The cupping is due to some type of moisture imbalance in the wood flooring itself. As the name implies the surfaces of boards that suffer from cuppinghave a concave shape. Boards will remain cupped.

You can observe this dramatically in an interior wood floor that has been flooded then dried. Any wood floor can suffer from cupping. 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 should be. 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.

Moisture from below can. It ends up looking a little like an accordion. Cupping is a common problem found in hardwood floors. Wood cupping develops a set in boards ultimately boards that have cupped due to these moisture differences develop a set and remain cupped even when the boards have dried.

When the moisture increases the wood swells and then when it decreases the wood shrinks. Wood is hygroscopic in nature and thereby tends to absorb moisture from its surroundings causing problems in hardwood floors. The general effect is easy to demonstrate by putting a small strip of paper onto a small drop of water. This makes the wood appear to be in a u shape.

Leaks in pluming systems and fixtures sink dishwasher icemaker and toilet overflows. The simplest way to think of wood floor cupping is to imagine the edges of each plank sticking up higher than the centers. Cupping dry or wet wood floors can be caused by humidity lack of humidity temp water. Cupping is a result of the changes in moisture in the room.

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. Wet maintenance can cause cupping. Increase the relative humidity in the room with cupped floors to 20 percent to prevent cupping from the air being too dry. Cupping can also occur in rooms with dry humidity.

Cupping in solid wood floors. There are a number of potential causes of site related wood floor cupping. Site related causes of wood floor cupping. Wood is hygroscopic so it gains or loses moisture in your home seasonally.

See the picture at the top of this post for an example of a cupped floor. The sides of each board are higher than the middle sections. As you can see moisture and wood don t go well together. Cupping occurs in solid wood flooring as a result of an elevated mc in the bottom of the flooring compared with the mc of the face.

Wet crawlspaces and basements will cup a floor as moisture moves upward. Cupping means that the wood that is raised on the edges of each individual floor board.