Hardwood Floor Cleaning in Meadows Place, TX
The most common source of indoor water damage in a Houston house is a plastic pipe the size of your thumb that nobody has ever looked at.
An air conditioner running in July pulls gallons of water a day out of the air in a typical house. That water collects in a pan under the evaporator coil and drains away through a small plastic condensate line, and in this climate that line runs constantly for months on end.
Give it a few years and it grows a biological slime inside, because it is a permanently damp plastic pipe in a warm attic. The slime eventually blocks it.
Then the water has to go somewhere, and where it goes is down.
The Route Water Takes
When the primary drain blocks, the pan overflows. In a properly built system a secondary pan under the air handler catches it and a secondary line dumps it somewhere obvious, usually over a window outside, which is the whole point of that dripping pipe you have wondered about. When the secondary is also blocked or was never connected, the water goes through the ceiling and lands on whatever is below. In a house with wood floors, that is a wood floor, overnight, while everybody is asleep.
Twenty Minutes Every Spring
Find the condensate line where it exits, pour a cup of vinegar or a purpose-made tablet into the access tee near the air handler, and check that the secondary line is clear and terminating where you can see it. If the pipe over your window has ever dripped, your primary drain was blocked at that moment and the safety worked. That drip is a warning, not a nuisance, and it means the line needs clearing now.
Catching It on the Floor
Ceiling water reaching a floor tends to land in one spot and spread. On a finished wood floor a short exposure caught quickly usually dries out with nothing worse than a temporary mark. Water that sat for hours goes through the seams and into the subfloor, and that produces cupping and, in the older townhomes here where a floor sits on a slab, an adhesive release. The difference between the two outcomes is almost entirely how many hours it sat.
Not sure whether your floor needs cleaning or refinishing? There are three tests you can run yourself in about a minute, and they will tell you which one you are dealing with before anyone quotes you.
Hardwood problems we handle in Meadows Place
Go and find your condensate line this weekend. Most homeowners in this city have never laid eyes on theirs.
Meadows Place is covered on 281-969-3290 or the scheduler here, with fifty dollars off the opening cleaning.
Areas we cover around Meadows Place
Neighborhoods: The Meadows, Park Meadow Townhouses, Brighton Lane, Meadow Glen, Meadow Valley, Dorrance Lane, Meadowtrail, Pender Lane
Zip codes: 77477
Hardwood questions from Meadows Place homeowners
There is a brown ring on the ceiling and the floor below looks fine.
Then you probably caught it. Deal with the drain line, and watch that patch of floor over the next several weeks for board edges lifting, because the effects show up gradually.
The floor got wet and we dried it with fans. Anything else?
Aim the air movement across the whole room and not at one spot, since drying one area faster than its neighbors is what causes the cupping you are trying to avoid. Then wait several weeks before deciding what the floor needs, because a great many of them come back.
Can you clean a floor that has been through this?
Once everything is genuinely dry and stable, yes, and it usually looks considerably better afterward. Boards that stayed cupped will still be cupped, since flattening them means sanding and that is not what we do.
Is there a device that warns you?
A float switch in the secondary pan that shuts the system off when water rises is inexpensive and standard on newer installations. If your house does not have one, it is the best fifty dollars you will spend on your floors.
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Schedule your Meadows Place hardwood floor cleaning
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