If Your Hardwood Floors In Your Chicago Home Are Damaged, Let Our Experts Help!

7/17/2019 (Permalink)

SERVPRO of Hyde Park / E. Bridgeport / Bronzeville appreciates the opportunity to protect and preserve your beloved home from water damage.

Call The Chicago Water Removal Experts For Hardwood Floor Damage

Whether water spread from an overflowing sink or blew in during a heavy summer rainstorm, the prized hardwood floors in your vintage Chicago foursquare home can conceal severe damage. The construction details of a hardwood floor installation help explain why hardwood can sustain long term damage while initially looking like it weathered the storm perfectly. We can enhance your understanding of the anatomy of a hardwood floor and mitigate and remediate the harm done.

Leaving the windows open for cross ventilation made sense when you left for work, but an afternoon thunderstorm poured inside. The horizontal sheets of rain necessitate water removal in your Chicago Craftsman home’s dining room. A quick mopping cannot account for all the moisture your floor struggled to handle. Failing to account for percolation of water below the visible surface of the floor can result in distortion of the hardwood, deterioration of subflooring, and the risk of secondary damage like mold or mildew growth.

A floor’s total structure includes joists installed at vertical intervals with plywood sheets attached across to provide underlying support. The boards of the visible floor lie on top of the subfloor. SERVPRO Water Damage Restoration Technicians (WRT) are trained to investigate whether the subfloor absorbed water as it seeped between the strips or planks of the floor. We use sensitive meters to compare the moisture content of each layer, ready to take steps to restore the appropriate balance.

The optimal moisture content for both the hardwood and substrate is roughly 13 percent. When the disparity between the layers is more than two percent for wide plank, and four percent for strip hardwood problems develop. A wetter subfloor transfers moisture to the dryer hardwood, causing a distortion called cupping where the long edges of each board rise, creating a shallow valley on each plank or strip. Fast action by the SERVPRO team limits the time moisture can wick upwards.

We extract any visible puddling and then use a negative air pressure system to suction the water from deep below the surface. SERVPRO technicians attach mats to the floor and connect hoses from a powerful extractor, accelerating the removal of moisture at all levels. Frequent monitoring of moisture levels and repositioning of the mats ensure the floor dries out evenly. Patience and professionalism return even century-old hardwood to preloss condition.

SERVPRO of Hyde Park / E. Bridgeport / Bronzeville appreciates the opportunity to protect and preserve your beloved home from water damage. Call us at (312) 509-5000 for water removal and structural drying services.

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