Don't rush to tear out water-soaked floors. 3 repair methods can save you a lot of money
Life throws all kinds of things at you that leave you feeling defeated and overwhelmed, and many of them cost you both effort and money. Take one of Huahua's gardening friends, for example. She forgot to turn off the tap when she went out, and in the end water ran all over the floor and soaked the entire floor. Now she not only had to put in the effort to clean it up, but also had to spend money.
When the gardening friend saw the soaked floor, she got angry and had the renovation workers tear it all out and put in a new floor. When asked how it went afterward, she said she really regretted tearing out the whole floor in a fit of anger. Actually, there are still ways to salvage a floor after it gets soaked. Hearing this, Huahua quickly wrote it down, and here she is sharing it with everyone!
In fact, wood flooring will not warp within twelve hours of getting soaked, so we can use this window of time to rescue a water-soaked floor. If the rescue succeeds, not only will you have learned another skill, but you will also save a large sum of money on a new floor!
1. If you have just spilled water on the floor, the soaked area is fairly small and therefore easier to deal with. At this point, use a towel with good water absorption to quickly wipe the wet area clean, then slowly wait for the water marks to air-dry naturally.
If the wet area is fairly large, you need to quickly use a dry mop to mop up the water marks on the floor, then gently wipe the water marks with a towel, and finally use a hair dryer to blow the soaked area dry before you are done. Also, when using the hair dryer, use the cold air setting. If you use the hot air setting to dry it, the floor will later crack and warp.
2. Many times a floor has been soaked for a long time before it is discovered. At this point, if water has already seeped down, we need to press gently to wipe the water inside the floor dry. Then remove the skirting boards from the edges and corners of the floor, which gives the remaining water in the floor enough space to evaporate. It takes about half a month to fully deal with it.
3. Finally, the worst-case scenario: the floor has been soaked in water for a full day and has already started to bulge. At this point the ordinary methods above no longer work. We need to first clean up the remaining water on the surface of the floor, then pry up the warped floorboards along the joists and put them in a ventilated place to air-dry. If the soaking has reached a particularly serious level, you need to contact the floor's after-sales service to see whether to replace it or find a way to repair it.
The 3 methods above are different measures for different floor soaking situations. Still, in daily life we should be careful and it is best not to be careless and let soaking happen, otherwise even if there are ways to repair it, it will still waste a lot of time.