The tips for wood flooring crackings

At present, for the new house decoration, many people choose real wood flooring, and hardwood flooring prices are a little higher. Therefore, once any quality problems of the wood flooring occurs, it would be really frustrating. the most common problem of wood flooring is the floor cracking, which is determined by the characteristics of the wood flooring itself.Once you have installed and used the flooring properly, even when the flooring is fully qualified product, this quality problem may also occur. So the flooring maintenance is very important.

Duiring wooden floors maintenance, we should be sure to keep the floor dry and clean. Usually, flooring moisture content remains 8~12% and for such wood flooring under normal circumstances, there would be no problem.

But improper installation and usage also will cause wood floor quality problem, such as no waterproof process when installing; cleaning with water pouring or wiping with soap water or alkali water (these actions will damage the gloss of the lacquer); no isolation between bathroom and living room(or bedroom) ; no close the curtains in summer ,then the direct strong sunshine  makes the wooden floors cracking; too low temperature setting for the air conditioner , causing huge temperature change day and night, resulting in the violent expansion or contraction and  deformation cracking for the hardwood flooring.

After the hardwood flooring is installed, if any flooring boards are found cupping up, we should at once take up these flooring boards and remove the old glue and ash, use new glue and press closely; if some flooring boards’s lacquer damaged or falling down, we could use  No. 400 sandpaper dipped with SOAP water for polishing, and then clean these floor boards, make the finishing or lacquer after painting these boards, finally polish with wax again 24 hours later drying. Waxing the wood flooring once time every month is one of the best ways of maintenance, but make sure that clean the moisture and stains on the flooring before waxing.

Why the engineered wood flooring would be unglued

The unglued wood flooring is a very seriously aging problem, which mainly occurs in engineered wood flooring. The unglued phenomenon of engineered wood flooring usually leads to the separation between wood veneer and the plywood structure, affecting the use of engineered wood flooring. 　　

Engineered wood flooring unglued problems will have a big impact, causing the top veneer to come off from the structure, even making the veneer crack at the same time.

If the engineered wood flooring is unglued, it would be a very troublesome quality problem for the for the maintenance. The majoy way of maintaining the engineered wood flooring unglued, is to take out and re-install all the wood flooring. Thus, for consumers, engineered wood flooring unglued is really a very annoying problem. 　　

The major causes of the engineered wood flooring unglued 

　　

Firstly, The moisture content of the ground.

During the installation of wood flooring, the ground moisture is an important factor, because ground moisture level will affect the quality of the wood flooring in future. The unglued problem of wood flooring comes from to a large extend the retting or expansion of wooden floors due to the high moisture content of the ground and the top veneer would not expand as there is a plywood structure separating the ground and the top veneer. 　　

As a result, under the pulling force of floor expansion, there would a phenomenon of separation between top veneer and the plywood structure, which results in the engineered wood flooring unglued.

flooring and panels will produce a pull effect, resulting in solid wood multilayered flooring unglued. 　　

Next: The wrong ways of cleaning and maintenance

When daily cleaning, people may use wet cleaning equipment, which leads to water getting into the surface of engineered flooring, prompting the expansion within the floor and causing the expansive force within the multilayer, which leads to the phenomenon of ungluing.

When we solve the problem of the wood flooring unglued,it is very important for us to control the moisture of the ground and  the indoor humidity, to use the dry cleaners for cleaning and maintenance,.These means keeps our wood flooring durable and not aging. 

The method of installing the wood flooring on under heating system

The environment of under floor heating system is very complex, requiring a high thermal conductivity and dimensional stability of the wood flooring. To ensure a better heat conduction and avoid flooring deformation , the thickness should not be more than 8mm for laminate flooring And the other floorings with thickness more than 8mm, such as hardwood flooring, Bamboo flooring, engineered wood flooring and laminate flooring are not suitable for under heating system for the occasion.

Requirements before installation

1. Before the installation, the under heating system must be tested for the heating water, with the water temperature at least 50 degrees centigrade, and the underfloor heating system is working properly, and the system keeps the water temperature more than 12 hours. Makre sure that there is no leakage before installing the wood flooring on the system. 　　

2 The construction method of destroying the ground surface is not allowed, as this kind of method will undermine the cooling coil of the heating system　

3 If the construction is at winter in cold areas, the wood flooring should be kept with open boxed in the field for more than 12 hours in advance, to make the flooring adapt to variations in temperature to avoid the deformation of flooring boards. 　　

4 Before installation, the ground surface should be checked wither it is flat, dry, clean. Make sure the doors and windows are complete, there is no leaking from relevant facilities. In the end, pls check the distance between the door and the ground is enough or not 　　

5 Lay the Special underlayer neatly on the ground, and seal the joints of the underlayers with adhesive tape.

6 Regarding the laying direction of the flooring, the direction of the long-side flooring board  should be consistent with the room lighting. During installation, the grooves of the long-side floor in the first row should be faced to the wall, with wood wedges between the floor and walls and  with a floor expansion gap about 8-12mm.The flooring boards should be staggered between rows and rows for installation and the dislocation distance should be more than 20 cm. 　　

7 When laying the flooring, pls pay great attention at all times to the height difference of the surface, cracks and other defects. Make sure the flooring boards laid are qualified before gluing the joints and immediately remove residual glue on board. 　　

8 No walking on the flooring within 12 hours after installation, other subcequent activities of construction should be carried out after 24 hours. 　　

9 if floor laying is longer than 8M, or at the joining between rooms , the  wood floorings shall be cut off to leave an expansion gap about 8-12mm, which needs a T profile as connection to reduce the floor arching. 　　

　　

Baseboard installation

When you install the wood skirting, the expansion joints should be covered. 　　

Attentions:

1 When decorating the house, we shall pay attention to the under floor heating system: no legless furniture to avoid wood flooring's local deformation caused by poor cooling. 　　

2 For the first operation of under heating system or the restarting after a long time, keep slowl heating speed (recommended heating rate is 1 c/h) to prevent heating up too fast which could cause cracking of the wood flooring and twisting. At the same time,  pls keep the floor dry.

3 when the indoor air is dry, indoor humidity should be adjusted.

The engineered wood flooring maintenance

Many people tend to focus on the purchase of multi-layer engineered wood flooring, but overlooked the flooring maintenance issues. However,several years later, the multi-layer wood flooring appears arching, cracks, dim colors and so on. If we don't find out the root of this problem, all could be blamed would be the quality problem of multi-layer engineered wood flooring.　　 In fact, the engineered wood flooring needs maintenance all the time, which will prolong the the lifetime of the flooring, keeping the fantastic gloss or color of the surface.

What we should do to maintain the engineered wood flooring ?

1, for ordinary maintenance, please use a vacuum cleaner and dry cloth to wipe and clean the wood flooring. too wet wiping with mop can easily lead to multiply wood flooring  arching and cupping;

2, if your multiply wooden floor is very dirty, the first job is to clear the sands,dusts or other trash; then dip the rag in water with neutral detergent, wire the mop dry thoroughly before mopping the multi-layer solid wood flooring. It would be best  to wax the wood flooring after the flooring surface is completely dry. In addition, lay the doormat at the entrance, put on the shoes for indoor use after getting into rooms;　

3 During waxing the engineered wood flooring, we need to soak the rags with aqueous wax, wipe with the soaked rags in the direction of flooring wood grain. Do not pour the aqueous wax directly on the flooring surface and wipe, this easily will make the wax film uneven;

4, During the waxing process, please keep a good indoor ventilation.If the room temperature is below 5 degree or the temperature change is very huge on a rainy day, the wax probably would get whitened or bleaching.thus we need to try best to avoid waxing wood flooring under such circumstances;　

　5, Pls do not walk on the waxed wood flooring before the wax is completely dried. It is best for us to walk in after 4 hours when the waxing is finished.

6, For the maintenance of the flooring, waxing the multiply wood flooring every quarter (3 months) is a perfect option. Too frequent waxing and too late waxing are both not good to the flooring coating.

What are the reasons for wood flooring aging

We believe that many people have encountered the problem of an aging wood flooring, because, as time goes on , wood flooring will be discolored, bulging, cracking, peeling, cupping, and mildewing, arching, degumming, worn, which we all name as the aging wood flooring. Then what are the reasons of wood flooring ageing?

There are two reasons of wood flooring aging: internal and external.

The internal reasons are including： the moisture content of wood flooring, the performance and quality of flooring lacquer, the wood material of flooring, the quality of moisture-proof underlayer installed when laying the floor, the gaps left for expoation and contraction during the installtion of flooring.These will affect the life time  and the aging of your hardwood flooring.

External factors mainly refer to the temperature of the wood floor, humidity, mold fungus causeing aging wooden flooring.

The most difficult problem for anti-aging flooring technology is at the aspect of flooring lacquer.

As the surface coatings of wood flooring with ordinary lacquer could not match those coatings of laminate flooring in terms of hardness, flexibility, scratch resistance and the abrasion resistance. Thus, there would be bumps, scratches and lacquer-sheddings for those ordinary wood floorings and this phenomena undoubtedly affects flooriing lifetime. 　　

The moisture content control, the moisture resistance ,the installation ways of hardwood flooring have great effects on the flooring aging. As a result, in normal situations, we should try to avoid the contact of hardwood flooring with water, this can significantly improve the lifetime of wooden flooring.At the same time, when purchasing flooring, we should also select the wood flooring with precise moisture control and good moisture resistance. 　　

During installation, we have to ask sellers to help us arrange installation, otherwise no one knows who shall take responsibility once problems occur.

To protect wood flooring from aging, it is necessary to cut off the source of wooden flooring,aging.The above information is what we must pay great attention to when buying the hardwood flooring.

3 steps to deal with soaked wood flooring

We never know when accidents happen.Although we take care of wood flooring all the time, there will be unexpectedly an accident on them in daily lives, such as you forgot to shut the window when a storm comes, or forgot to shut the faucet at home. which would make our wood flooring soaked.This is a nightmare to us as the soaked wood flooring will definitely break in a short time. If we take appropriate measures,there is still chances of bailing out these soaked wood flooring.

Remove soaked flooring immediately. If the wood floor is soaked in water, we should remove all the floors immediately. If it is hardwood flooring,we should ask those professionals to remove.Other floors such as laminate flooring, etc. you can take out the ( wood skirtings)baseboard and remove them by ourselvies.

After removal, the flooring need to be dried in a ventilated place, no exposure to sunshine, becauseexposure to sunshine causes rapid loss of moisture ,which leads to deformation of the floor. Then dry the ground and re-install the wood flooring. However,you’d better to ask a professional worker for installation, since the glue used in the past already does not work any more. Besides, the soaked wood flooring will perform very well, and definitely easily get deformed.If we maintain these soaked flooring with wax or oil, it will be much helpful to those wood floorings.

We need to take measures as soon as possible after the floor is soaked in water. if it is after 3 days, there is nothing we could do but get rid of the wood flooring. Above are the emergency measures you can take when  all of your wood flooring is soaked, if only a small area is wet with water, such as accidentally a pot of water poured on the floor, we just need to mop the flooring a few times, using a fan to dry can help.

If it is partial soaking damage, clean up the floor after a period of time to observe whether there are obvious changes.If there is a cupping of flooring, you can contact workers to do partial replacement, and calculate the floor space  which needs replacement. If there is remaining of the original flooring, we may require workers to use this floor to install. If there is no remaining, you may need to check the size and wood of your flooring for replacement, because only the floor with the same color and size will be applied, otherwise it is impossible to be installed with the wrong size or it will show great color difference. In the end, be sure to arrange installation of hardwood flooringuntill the ground is already dried.

How to make floor color collocate with overall decoration

Recently our customer Mr. Liu who is decorating his new house came to us for consulting: what factors should we consider to choose wood flooring colors? And at the same time, how to make flooring color collocate with overall decoration?

Based on MrLiu’s question about choosing wood flooring colors for his new home, we estimate that this might be a very common question which many people will come cross when they prepare for decoration of new houses.

We hope this article will help you and let you have your own solution to this common question.

The lighting conditions of the living room determines the range of wood flooring color. Rooms with good lighting conditions fit the floor colors in a wider range: deep color and light color are both available. In the low-story rooms, the natural lighting is not good then we should choose the suitable floor with higher brightness for the ground. If possible, consider the dark color as the last option for the low-story rooms with poor natural lighting.

Color affects people's visual sense: warm color is the color of expansion, cold color is the color of contraction, as a result, small room should choose the cool colors or simple bright floor to make people feel the space largened. If selecting the warm colorfor the wood floor, we will feel expressed as this color makes us feel the space more narrow.

In the choice of wood grain, People in Asian prefer the straright or small wood grains, avoiding the wood grain with large and waving patterns, which in fact is the favorite to the people from Europe and North America.

How to balance the floor color and overall home：

Nowadays, many families prefer to use white flooring, hoping to have a peaceful atmosphere at home. The popular light colors are gray (grey) and white, these colors give people the feeling of ease and peace.

The effectiveness and performance of the dark colors floor are very strong and these dark colors are of distinctive personality,for example red floor gives people a strong atractive feeling. If the walls are also painted with strong attravtive colors, it would look incongruous. Selecting the ivory color with pink tones for red flooring, would form a sense of unity in our eyes.

Some cusotmers collocate white walls with dark brown floors, this collocation will make the floors much darker. If the walls are in cashmere color similar the brown floor color, then colors of the walls and wood flooring are relatively close, the room looks much larger.

When choosing the hardwood flooring, we also need to pay attention to the collocation of flooring and furnitures. Flooring color should match the furniture color, in a calm, gentle tone.Because the ground decoration is the permanent decoration,usually the wood flooring would be changed often, thus choosing a neutral color is a very good idea