Buckling and tenting — a floor with no room to expand lifts off the substrate. It is the end state of a missing or filled expansion gap.View full size — A hardwood floor lifted clear of its subfloor in a raised peak, boards tented against each other because there was nowhere left to expand.

Buckling and tenting are the most dramatic of the failure modes and the most clearly attributable: the floor expanded, the expansion gaps were absent or insufficient, and the only remaining direction was up.

It is almost always a gap failure at a wall or a fixed object rather than a material failure.

Expansion gapDeliberate clearance left at walls and at every fixed object so the floor has somewhere to go when it expands.
Relative humidityThe amount of water vapour in the air relative to what that air could hold at its temperature — the environmental variable a hardwood floor actually responds to.
Moisture contentThe proportion of water in wood or in a subfloor, measured before installation and used to decide whether the two are compatible.

Referenced by

Terms that point here

Expansion gap

Provenance

Where this definition comes from

toronto hardwood climate moisture protocol — failure modes

Framework pillars this term is material to

Pillar 4 — Expansion and movement

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Buckling

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