If you want to learn how to rehydrate wood floors you have come to the right place.
Our favorite method to do this is to use a humidifier to increase the humidity in the room, which will in turn increase the humidity of the wood.
You should always check whether you need to increase the moisture content in your floors before doing so by using our handy tips below.
How To Tell If Your Wood Floor Needs Hydration
There are some telltale signs that your floor is too dry and needs hydration, so let’s take a look at the most obvious ones.
Cracks
If your floor has endured severe amounts of dryness it may start to show stress in the form of cracks.
Craking will occur with the grain of the wood and is usually very easy to notice when it has happened.
Unfortunately, cracks cannot be repaired easily and the usual treatment is to replace the affected floorboards, however, it may be likely that there are more floorboards that are on the verge of cracking if one already has.
Gaps
If you notice gaps between floorboards then there is a good chance that your floor is dry.
Gaps are formed when individual floorboards reduce in size by loss of moisture, and the size of the gaps is a good indicator as to how dry your floor is – the bigger the gap the more moisture has been lost.
Gaps can sometimes be the result of your floor being fitted incorrectly, so an easy trick to distinguish between this and moisture issues is to monitor your floorboards. If gaps begin to show over time then it is almost always to do with moisture content lowering within the wood.
Splintering
Splintering is a similar result to when cracks begin to show and happens as the wood becomes brittle under the stress of low moisture content.
Again, a splintered floorboard will need to be replaced and it is likely that your entire floor could become damaged in the future as well.
Always Check For Seasonality Before Rehydration
During the winter months the air becomes less humid, this, in turn, causes wood floors to become dry as they lose moisture to form an equilibrium with their surroundings.
This is supplemented by the fact that heating is used more readily during the winter. As you heat up the home it dries the air out further, leading to more moisture being lost from the floor.
This sounds quite serious, but in a lot of cases it will fix itself as the warmer months come and the air becomes more humid. You should always check if this is the case before hydrating your floor as you may disturb the equilibrium and encounter cupping or other problems in the warmer months due to over-hydration.
Monitoring Humidity Levels
As well as checking your floor throughout the year to see if seasonal humidity variation is the cause of your problems, you should also monitor the humidity levels to see if there is something else at play.
Hygrometers are relatively cheap to buy and can be used to monitor the amount of moisture in the air at any given time. Allowing for seasonal fluctuations, you should aim to maintain between 30% to 50% relative humidity to keep your floor in good shape.
Monitoring humidity can allow you to see whether you have a seasonal problem causing your wood floor to become dry, which should fix itself through the year – or a humidity problem year-round that requires action to counteract.
Easy Ways To Rehydrate Wood Floors
If you are certain that the season is not the cause, by monitoring the humidity and checking your floor year-round, then it is time to take action.
We really can’t stress how important it is that you take these precautions before trying to rehydrate.
Humidifier
The simplest way to increase the moisture content within your wood is to employ a humidifier.
Humidifiers do the opposite of dehumidifiers – which are used to treat the opposite problem when your floors are increasing in size due to moisture content – and work to increase the levels of humidity in the air.
Your floor will then begin to slowly absorb the moisture from the air to reach an equilibrium with its surroundings and you can monitor the size of gaps daily to see the impact, just be sure to monitor over time or you may cause the moisture content to become too high.
Boil Water
Another way to increase humidity is to boil water and allow it to evaporate into the room. This is an easy way to increase the moisture content of the air and doesn’t require you to buy a humidifier.
This is usually a short term option however as the energy needed to repeatedly boil water can be quite high which can be expensive.
Shower With The Door Open
If your wood floor is near to where you shower you can try showering with the door open.
This is the same principle as boiling water however it is more energy efficient as you are showering anyway, so opening the door does not use more energy.
Air Drying Clothes
If you have a drying rack you can place this in the room where your floor needs to be rehydrated and use it to dry your clothes fresh out of the washer.
As the clothes dry they will release moisture into the room which will, in turn, increase the moisture within your floor.
Damp, Mold and Mildew
When you purposefully increase the humidity in a room, especially over long periods of time, you can increase the chances of damp, mold and mildew.
This is why you shouldn’t forget to monitor your walls and areas around air vents for any signs of these developing while you are trying to remedy a dry floor. This is something that people tend to overlook but you don’t want to cause issues elsewhere in the home while trying to fix another.
It works best to use the methods mentioned previously in a well-ventilated area ideally with fans and windows to increase air circulation. You can also use a hygrometer to double-check you arent increasing the humidity too much which is a surefire way of preventing any problems.
Repairing Moisture Damage On Wood Floors
Moisture damage caused by dryness is usually quite hard to repair.
Cracks and splintering can only be fixed by replacing the affected panels, while gaps can be improved using any of the methods above to increase the moisture content in the wood.
Sealants
Water-based polyurethane or oil-based urethane are two options of sealants that can be applied to your wood.
Many people believe this will affect the level of moisture in hardwood flooring, but it will simply lower the amount of moisture that is lost. A new sealant won’t increase the amount of moisture present, so you should really increase this first before thinking about re-sealing.
Final Thoughts
We hope you’ve got a good idea of how to rehydrate wood floors from this article, if you know of any other tips or tricks then don’t hesitate to let us know by contacting us here.