Ask the expert

My house was built in 1964 with 1½-inch wooden floor planks in the living room, hall and bedrooms.

With the recent cold snap, the floors are about 64 degrees when the room air is about 68-70 degrees. The foundation is pier and beam. The floor boards are separating! There are small openings appearing between some of the board and I can see filler paste between the boards.

Should I take this opportunity to work in fresh filler or leave things alone to let them expand when it warms up, again?

“Before you grab for the putty knife and wood filler I think it best to take a few minutes and reflect on the conditions which you are describing,” advises Tim Hennelly, owner of Casa Buena home inspections of Little Rock.

It is not unusual for a house to go through some degree of thermal expansion and contraction during the course of the year, Hennelly explains, adding that depending on a number of conditions, generally environmental, the degree of expansion and contraction can be being more noticeable some years than others. During periods of extreme moisture, some conditions will be more noticeable than when drier conditions prevail. This makes it difficult to determine what gaps and openings are appearing as a result of thermal expansion and contraction, he says.

“It is very likely that the condition you describe has been happening time and time again in your house,” Hennelly says. “You do not state how long you have lived in the house so you may not have knowledge of such a trend.

And extremes in the weather will likely make the thermal expansion and contraction much more pronounced than usual.”

Hennelly advises that he would not be concerned about the small gaps appearing between some scattered boards.

“The important thing to remember about this phenomena is that the effects will reverse as the environmental conditions change and the gaps between the wood floor boards will close,” he explains.

If the gaps are filled in now, when the boards return to their original position, it’s very likely that the putty will then be pushed out.

Hennelly adds that his own house, also on a pier and beam foundation and built in 1963, has been going through the same process for the 21 years he and his family have lived there.

He suggests trying some of the same methods he has used in his own home to minimize the effects of thermal expansion and contraction. They include installing a full vapor barrier throughout the crawl space, which reduced the moisture vapor in the area that was causing the wood flooring to swell.

“Excessive swelling occasionally occurred, which even caused the floor to rise and make contact with a door or two,” Hennelly explains.

Another step he took in his own home was removing the fiberglass batt insulation from between the floor joists, adding that he does not recommend this for all pier and beam crawl spaces.

“It is my experience that in crawl spaces which are about 3 feet or less in height, any moisture vapor tends to be retained in the fiberglass material,” he says. “As a result, development of fungal growth is noticeable on the wood floor joists just beneath where the insulation meets the joist.”

Both including the full vapor barrier throughout the crawl space and removing the fiberglass batt insulation from underneath his home yielded positive results, Hennelly says.

Finally, Hennelly says, experiment with when foundation vents should be opened or closed.

“If the vents provide for ventilation of moisture-laden air, then closing them during the winter months did not make sense,” he says, adding that Arkansas experiences low humidity during the winter and high humidity during the summer. “My practice is now to open the majority of my vents in the winter and close the majority of them during the summer.”

HomeStyle, Pages 35 on 03/08/2014

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