DIYbanter - View Single Post

yourname

wrote:
The house I bought last winter has a bamboo floor in the kitchen (and
radiant heat in the floors). The bamboo is natural-colored and grained
like a wood floor (lines visible, not dots of endgrain). It sat fine
through the winter, but the humidity of summer has caused the boards to
swell, buckling the center of the floor upwards. The middle 6-7 of the
3-1/2" (x 5/8" thick) boards are humped over most of the 13-foot length
of the kitchen, as much as 2" high in the middle of the hump. In
addition to being trecherous walking if one (visitors) are not
expecting it, I am concerned that further floor or cabinet damage can
occur if a heavy friend steps on it (forcing the adjacent boards
outwards and/or upwards, against wall and under cabinets).

As far as I can tell, the flooring goes all the way to the walls under
the cabinets. The floor was laid about 5 years ago, and the prior
owner simply lived with the fact that it popped up every summer here in
north NJ. He tells me the installer is out of business.

Any suggestions? Will a typical homeowners' insurance plan cover
repair of a problem like this? Is there a solution short of pulling
the cabinets and appliances from one wall, reducing the width of a
board to allow for expansion, and replacing everything? Thoughts?

Regards, Teo

It cannot be installed correctly. That is way too much expan sion for
just humidity, there has got to be water there somewhere. If it is on a
slab, maybe it is condensing