The Cork Floor we had installed in our new home has a few 'bubbles'
appearing on the surface of a few of the planks. Is this normal? a
defect? an installation mistake? just trying to figure out what the
issue is here.

We have the long tongue and groove type planks installed.
any advice would help - thanks

Mike

steve wrote:
wrote:
The Cork Floor we had installed in our new home has a few 'bubbles'
appearing on the surface of a few of the planks. Is this normal? a
defect? an installation mistake? just trying to figure out what the
issue is here.

We have the long tongue and groove type planks installed.
any advice would help - thanks

Mike

How new is the house? If the slab is fairly new it may be that there
was still too much moisture still in the slab. If you push on it and
it's squishy, that most likely will be water and the floor should not
have been put in without a moisture barrier. Especialy since the mat.
used is cork. The contractor or sales person should have made you
aware of this if they knew the house was new. If it's not moisture it
could be a couple of other things.
I assume since it is a Cork Floor that it was glued down, if so it is
not unheard of for some glues to out-gas a little and that could be it.
If that is the case you should be able to push on the bubble with your
hand or step on it and it will go down while you have pressure on it.
Or there may be a small bit of debri like a tiny pebble or something
like that, in that case you would not be able to push it down. 3rd
option is that the installer didn't get the floor down properly. If
it's the glue out-gassing, a very small hole can be drilled (1/32")
into the floor to relive the pressure and MOST of the time the bubble
will go down and stay. Then you use a tiny bit of filler to fill in the
hold. If it's the rock or debri, you can take a finish hammer (smooth
head) and hit it squarely on the hard spot and it'll break up the debri
and let the bubble lay down, but you should have the person that
installed it do the repair since whatever the cause it is their
responsibility to fix the floor they put in and if someone is going to
damage it trying to do the repair, it's better if its them since they
would have to fix it either way.
Good Luck
Steve

Just an update to this -
It very well could be a moisture issue - we'll find out soon. A rep
from the flooring company that did the work is coming over this week.
I'm very interested to find out the cause - faulty product? moisture?
faulty installation? I'm pretty sure we didn't do anything wrong, so
it should be covered under warranty.
Note that these planks are not glued down - they're tongue and groove
floating style.

Mike

wrote in
oups.com:


steve wrote:
wrote:
The Cork Floor we had installed in our new home has a few 'bubbles'
appearing on the surface of a few of the planks. Is this normal?
a defect? an installation mistake? just trying to figure out what
the issue is here.

We have the long tongue and groove type planks installed.
any advice would help - thanks

Mike

How new is the house? If the slab is fairly new it may be that there
was still too much moisture still in the slab. If you push on it and
it's squishy, that most likely will be water and the floor should not
have been put in without a moisture barrier. Especialy since the mat.
used is cork. The contractor or sales person should have made you
aware of this if they knew the house was new. If it's not moisture it
could be a couple of other things.
I assume since it is a Cork Floor that it was glued down, if so it is
not unheard of for some glues to out-gas a little and that could be
it. If that is the case you should be able to push on the bubble with
your hand or step on it and it will go down while you have pressure
on it. Or there may be a small bit of debri like a tiny pebble or
something like that, in that case you would not be able to push it
down. 3rd option is that the installer didn't get the floor down
properly. If it's the glue out-gassing, a very small hole can be
drilled (1/32") into the floor to relive the pressure and MOST of the
time the bubble will go down and stay. Then you use a tiny bit of
filler to fill in the hold. If it's the rock or debri, you can take
a finish hammer (smooth head) and hit it squarely on the hard spot
and it'll break up the debri and let the bubble lay down, but you
should have the person that installed it do the repair since whatever
the cause it is their responsibility to fix the floor they put in and
if someone is going to damage it trying to do the repair, it's better
if its them since they would have to fix it either way.
Good Luck
Steve

Just an update to this -
It very well could be a moisture issue - we'll find out soon. A rep
from the flooring company that did the work is coming over this week.
I'm very interested to find out the cause - faulty product? moisture?
faulty installation? I'm pretty sure we didn't do anything wrong, so
it should be covered under warranty.
Note that these planks are not glued down - they're tongue and groove
floating style.

Mike



Well, if you had it installed, the installer should have done a moisture
test. Even the DIY kit they sell where they sell laminate has a test
kit. Effective? Who knows?

Their only "point the finger at you" would be that the moisture was OK
at the time of install and the excessiveness developed afterwards. Maybe
a good time to can a response for that ahead of time.

So the flooring company came in and remedied (temporarily?) the
situation by injecting some sort of liquid adhesive into the bubbles
and then using a roller to push the bubbles down. We then put some
heavy books on the repaired surface for about a day. This is all
second hand info as I was at work while this was going on. The
flooring guy hadn't had much experience with cork flooring and really
had no explanation why it was happening (maybe that's the way the
material behaves sometimes?). In general, the floor looks better - but
far from perfect (some small bubbling still there - but maybe we just
need to flatten it out more since cork has a 'memory'). They
volunteered to come do this 'service' whenever we needed it.

Mike


Al Bundy wrote:
wrote in
oups.com:


steve wrote:
wrote:
The Cork Floor we had installed in our new home has a few 'bubbles'
appearing on the surface of a few of the planks. Is this normal?
a defect? an installation mistake? just trying to figure out what
the issue is here.

We have the long tongue and groove type planks installed.
any advice would help - thanks

Mike

How new is the house? If the slab is fairly new it may be that there
was still too much moisture still in the slab. If you push on it and
it's squishy, that most likely will be water and the floor should not
have been put in without a moisture barrier. Especialy since the mat.
used is cork. The contractor or sales person should have made you
aware of this if they knew the house was new. If it's not moisture it
could be a couple of other things.
I assume since it is a Cork Floor that it was glued down, if so it is
not unheard of for some glues to out-gas a little and that could be
it. If that is the case you should be able to push on the bubble with
your hand or step on it and it will go down while you have pressure
on it. Or there may be a small bit of debri like a tiny pebble or
something like that, in that case you would not be able to push it
down. 3rd option is that the installer didn't get the floor down
properly. If it's the glue out-gassing, a very small hole can be
drilled (1/32") into the floor to relive the pressure and MOST of the
time the bubble will go down and stay. Then you use a tiny bit of
filler to fill in the hold. If it's the rock or debri, you can take
a finish hammer (smooth head) and hit it squarely on the hard spot
and it'll break up the debri and let the bubble lay down, but you
should have the person that installed it do the repair since whatever
the cause it is their responsibility to fix the floor they put in and
if someone is going to damage it trying to do the repair, it's better
if its them since they would have to fix it either way.
Good Luck
Steve

Just an update to this -
It very well could be a moisture issue - we'll find out soon. A rep
from the flooring company that did the work is coming over this week.
I'm very interested to find out the cause - faulty product? moisture?
faulty installation? I'm pretty sure we didn't do anything wrong, so
it should be covered under warranty.
Note that these planks are not glued down - they're tongue and groove
floating style.

Mike



Well, if you had it installed, the installer should have done a moisture
test. Even the DIY kit they sell where they sell laminate has a test
kit. Effective? Who knows?

Their only "point the finger at you" would be that the moisture was OK
at the time of install and the excessiveness developed afterwards. Maybe
a good time to can a response for that ahead of time.

replying to TigerFan84, Greenecork wrote:
So I know this is an old thread but we had cork flooring problems in 2018.
The flooring company tried to blame us for the bubbles - said we used some
kind of solvent on the floor. We did not. Eventually, the store that sold us
the flooring paid for most of the cost of replacing our entire floor and the
manufacturer paid a tiny part, still saying nothing was wrong with their
flooring. Fast forward 14 months - the bubbles are starting again. It is the
second floor of our home. We will try the above remedy. Thank you for that.
Anyway, this has been a bit of a nightmare!

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