Hardwood floor crowning caused by water leak?

Hi,

I have a problem of my hardwood floor. It becomes a little bit crowning in past 4 weeks. I also used a moisture detector (with pin) to test. It was 6% last week but 10% yesterday. But the weather was hot last week and become cold from yesterday. There are a few different crowning around my house (2 in kitchen, 1 in living room and 2 in upper floor). The worst one is in kitchen. I have a few questions want to ask:

1. Is that caused by a water leak from pipeline? Since I also use water(a lot) to clean my hardwood floor and let them become dry in natural. Will the water cause crowning?
2. If these are caused by pipeline leak, why crowning appears in different places? I also notice that most crowning appears nearby a wall edge or door edge.
3. Since my moisture detector has pin and it's hard to get in the floor to test. Do I need to hire a plumber to check it? I talked to some companies and they said plumber will have extra charge if they use camera or other tools. A few hundreds extra.
4. Do I need to report to my insurance company? Since it is only crowning. I do not see any water come out from either the floor and ceiling. Or I can wait for the water shadow?

Here are some picture.

Thanks for your help.

 

my first thought is that yes, this is the problem. If you use water on a wood floor, the mop cannot be wringing wet. The mop needs to be as dry as possible so that water does not go into the cracks AT ALL. I think that you may have created your own problem by cleaning the floor and getting it too wet. If so, no... insurance will not help.

wood floors will also naturally expand and contract... and depending on how it was laid it can either create or alleviate the potential for problems. I assume this is a nail down floor, not a glue down or floating floor?

 

If that caused wood floor crowing, no problem. I got a good lesson from cleaning. Hopefully nothing need to do about fixing pipe.

 

If this is a floating floor, it could also be an issue with expansion and contraction. If the floor was installed too tight, it might cause it to buckle upwards. It needs room to expand. Generally it is about 3/8" (this space is hidden under the baseboard and door jamb/trim). If there is no space or not enough, it can buckle and cause the floor to shift in odd places, like doorways.

but too much water is VERY bad in any case.

 

Thanks for your explanation. I will keep the floor dry and no clean recently. However, if the moisture percentage is increasing and crowning is growing, is it more possible caused by pipe leak? At that time, do I need to ask a plumber to come?

Thanks,

 

5-10% is relatively low moisture. As long as it is in that range and does not get worse, no, I would not worry. I don't think this is related to any sort of "leak".

 

If the crowning is due to a leaking pipe, the problem would appear first near the leak.

 

To see if it's a water leak, turn off all the fixtures in the house for an hour or two. Look at the meter and record the reading. Watch to see if the little spinner moves - and if any water is used over a couple hours (or overnight).

I wouldn't immediately assume a leak. Is it exceptionally humid in the house?

 

Oh, I turned off all fixtures and wait for 20 mins. The spinner is stilling running. Probably I need to wait for at least 1 hour? When I turn off all valve that I can see, the spinner stopped right away. The interesting thing is: then I turned on all valve and spinner did not run. The spinner started to running again when I turn on some fixtures. Some of my friends said that the spinner was moving slowly because fridge or water tank slowly and automatically using water? I really have no idea of that.

For the humid in the house, I tried to test the moisture in several parts and they are all around 5%-7%, except this part (over 10%).