I was called to inspect a wood floor where the homeowner had stopped the work in progress due to a noticeable hump in the floor. She was convinced that the flooring was defective, and as the rep for the wood flooring manufacturer's local distributor, I went out to inspect the floor.
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The Problem
I was called to inspect a wood floor where the homeowner had stopped the work in progress due to a noticeable hump in the floor. She was convinced that the flooring was defective, and as the rep for the wood flooring manufacturer's local distributor, I went out to inspect the floor.
The Procedure
The job site was a new home in the Midwest that had been built by a large national builder. After the homeowner had lived there for six months, she decided to replace the carpeting in her dining room with a ¾-by 3 1/4 -inch unfinished hardwood floor. The home was standard construction for the area, with plywood subfloors over joists. The carpeting was removed and the new flooring installed over a moisture retarder on top of the existing plywood subfloor. As the finishing crew was preparing to apply the final coat of finish, the homeowner noticed the hump in the middle of the dining room floor and stopped the job.
The Cause
When I arrived on the site, the hump in the floor was immediately obvious. I put a 3-foot level on the floor to reveal a height difference of 3/8 inch in 3 feet. When I put one end of a 4-foot straightedge on the hump and the other end away from the high spot, you could actually slide pennies under the straightedge. It was immediately obvious to me and the coating crew on the job that there was a problem with the joist underneath the high spot in the wood floor. The homeowner, however, was not convinced. Her son-in-law worked for the builder, and as far as she was concerned, the builder could do no wrong.
Regardless of whether the builder or the wood flooring manufacturer was at fault, the wood floor had to be removed. Once the wood flooring was ripped out, the plywood subfloor was removed and the high joist exposed. The joist underneath the hump in the wood flooring was 3/8 -inch thicker than the joists on either side of it, and it had obvious moisture problems—it had been so wet that the fasteners used to adhere the subfloor to that particular joist had actually rusted. The homeowner had never noticed the problem with the floor before the hardwood was installed because the floor had been carpeted and her dining room table had been placed directly over the hump. Only when the furniture was removed and the wood flooring was installed did the problem become noticeable.
How to Fix the Floor
At this point, the builder came out to the home and shaved down the joist so it was level with the other joists. A plywood subfloor was reinstalled over the joists and a new wood floor was installed, sanded and finished. The builder and the wood flooring contractor agreed amicably to split the cost of the repair. It isn't often that agreements like that can be worked out as easily as this one was, but because the homeowner was such a talker, the builder and wood flooring contractor were motivated to get the problem resolved as quickly as possible and make sure she was happy.
In the Future
In my wood flooring career I've seen several job sites just like this one—a huge repair and hassle could have been avoided if the contractor's crew would have simply checked the subfloor and properly prepared the site for hardwood flooring. Just because it's an existing floor doesn't mean it doesn't have a problem, so make sure every subfloor conforms to industry standards.