Plywood and OSB hold moisture well after the surface has returned to its normal colour, and a concrete slab that has taken water can keep releasing it for weeks. Underlay, insulation and any levelling compound below all behave the same way, and none of it can be judged by standing on the floor. Where a property has a water history, we take readings and write them down rather than working from how the floor feels underfoot.
The date, the source, how long it sat and what was done afterwards change the scope more than the room dimensions do.
Meters on the wood, and where a slab is involved and the new floor is moisture sensitive, an in-situ probe or calcium chloride test.
Lift a section rather than spot-checking. What is under a floor that has taken water is the part that decides the real scope.
Removal, disposal, subfloor work, levelling and new floor as individual items, with photographs taken before anything came up.
Flooring Experts Calgary provides flooring installation and repair to homeowners and businesses across High River, Alberta.
The June 2013 southern Alberta flood reached High River, and that is not distant history for a floor. It changed what is under a lot of surfaces in this town, and it changed the sequence in which work was done, much of it in a hurry, some of it thoroughly, some of it not.
So when we look at a floor here, the first question is not what material you would like. It is what has happened to this assembly, when, and what was done about it afterwards. A replaced surface does not tell you the subfloor was replaced. It does not tell you a slab was tested, or that joists were checked, or that levelling compound placed over a damp base was ever allowed to dry properly.
What we do about that is take readings and write them down. Meters on wood. Where a slab is involved and the new floor is moisture sensitive, an in-situ probe or a calcium chloride test rather than a judgement. And where the history warrants it, we lift a section and look rather than spot-check from the edge of the room.
The other half of the picture in High River is age. A good deal of the housing here predates the modern subfloor, which means plank rather than sheet goods underneath, and it means layers: covering laid over covering over decades, each one levelling out a little less than the last.
That produces two practical consequences. Modern click and floating floors have flatness tolerances written into their manufacturer instructions, and a plank subfloor with gaps between the boards will not meet them without an overlay panel or a levelling pass. And removal is a bigger line than people budget for, because nobody knows how many layers are down there until the first one comes up.
There is one thing we stop for. Vinyl floor tile from before roughly 1980 can contain asbestos in the tile or the adhesive beneath it. If we find something that looks like it, we stop work and tell you. Abatement is a licensed trade and it is not ours.
Where flooring work follows a water event or an insurance claim, the useful thing a flooring contractor produces is documentation, not opinion. That means room-by-room measurements, the floor types identified, photographs taken before anything is lifted, and a written breakdown that separates removal, disposal, subfloor work, levelling and the new floor into individual lines.
Be clear about what that is and is not. We are a flooring contractor. We are not adjusters, we do not run restoration drying equipment, and we hold no remediation certification. Where a restoration contractor has already been through the property, we want their final readings and the date the equipment came off, because that determines whether we can start or need to wait.
Waiting is often the right answer. A floor laid over a substrate that is still wet gives you cupping, adhesive failure and, below grade, a mould problem that costs a multiple of what the flooring did.
It is still worth mentioning. A replaced surface does not tell you what happened to the subfloor, the joists or a slab underneath, and remedial work done under time pressure is not always complete. Knowing the history tells us where to open up rather than guess.
Sometimes, and it is written off too quickly. Solid boards cup when they take moisture from below, and that is not automatically permanent; a floor that dries slowly and evenly often flattens over weeks or months, at which point sanding and refinishing restores it. Sanding while the boards are still damp is the mistake, because the crowns come off and those areas end up dished once the wood flattens.
Laminate is the clearest case. The core is fibreboard and once it has swollen at the edges the board is finished. Carpet underlay is effectively always replaced because it behaves like a sponge. Carpet itself can sometimes be saved if the water was clean and it was lifted quickly, but not where the water was contaminated.
No. We are a flooring contractor, not adjusters, and we do not perform restoration drying or hold remediation certification. What we produce is a flooring scope you can submit: room-by-room measurements, floor types identified, photographs taken before anything is lifted, and removal, disposal, subfloor work, levelling and new floor broken out as separate lines.
Mostly what is underneath. Older stock often has plank subfloors, several accumulated layers of covering, and floors that are out of flat in ways a modern build is not. That normally means an overlay panel or levelling before a modern floating or click product can meet its manufacturer instructions.