[lost??]

Had quite a bit of rain today and when I got home from work I noticed that water was getting into my finished basement. Not too much got in and I was able to get it under control with a shop vac. My concern is that there is now water under the vinyl plank Flooring I have down there. It's a floating floor that is sitting on a concrete slab with 6 mil plastic in between (manufacturers instructions said this was fine). I realize I have to fix the source if the leak, however right now I'm just looking for ideas on how to dry out the floor short of ripping it up (it's only 6 months old). Also, is mold a concern since this is an inorganic material? Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated, thanks!

[smoothy]

Dehumidifier... is a must...two is even better at opposite ends, fans to maximize circulation... and depending on how cool your basement is... maybe space heaters to encourage evaporation

[lost??]

Thanks for your response. Will a dehumidifier help with the water even if it is under the floor?

[smoothy]

Its going to take time... but eventually its going to evaporate, the drier the air is and the warmer it is... the quicker that's going to happen.

Concrete is moisture permiable to a degree... so some of its going to go back into the ground through the concrete as well. Fortunately.

[Studs ad]

I can't say for sure it will dry up, but I can say from personal experience that if you let it go then the insurance company may say that you were aware of an issue and neglected to do something and refuse to help at all. I had a leak on similar flooring and my son and I spent a good portion of a Sunday night pulling it up and the insurance actually paid us(deductible) for taking care of it before it got worse. We were careful and saved most of what we pulled up. I had a partial box left from when the flooring was put down which helped in the end. My daughter and her husband had a dish washer leak and thought that it was fixed and later the floor buckled. The insurance company claimed that they were aware of the issue and didn't do anything to fix it and refused to help them. We had to pull all of their sub flooring up and replace it and the finished flooring also, so buyer be ware! If you think there's a chance I would talk to my agent about things. Good Luck! I hate floods and fires.

[lost??]

I have a dehumidifier down there now, and it seems to be sucking the moisture up nicely, I had no idea how much moisture was in the air down there! It never really feels that humid.

Anyway... Studs ad... was the flooring you used the type that glued together to interlock the planks? If so, how did you get the floor up without damaging it? I also have about half a box left, but I would like to take some up just to see what's going on underneath.

[Studs ad]

The type of flooring I used just snaps together-interlocked. Normally they leave about 1/2" space for the floor to expand and contract around the edges of the room. If you can get under an edge and gently work it up you might get by not breaking any. Don't get rambunctious with it. There is point where it will break. The type of flooring that I think you have is a laminate top with an MDF type material on the back. If the MDF(multi density fiber- compressed sawdust) gets too wet it will expand and then you might issues. The MDF is normally treated, so if it doesn't get too wet for too long it might not expand(swell up and get soft) If you have regular hard wood laminate then that is a different story. It looks more like plywood with a layer of finished hardwood on the top. There is quite a variety of what comes under the term laminate flooring. My son does tile and laminate flooring as a side business to teaching school. I just tried to contact him and get his opinion, but I just got his voice mail. If he gets back to me I will see what he thinks.

[lost??]

Thanks for your reaponse. The floor is actually made of vinyl, it does not have any wood in it. It come in planks that have overlapping glue strips. These strips glue the planks together. Maybe I can get a heat gun and try to melt the glue. If I try pulling apart now, it would damage the individual pieces.

[Studs ad]

I guess that is good. I just talked with my son. He said basically what I thought originally and that is it is going to be really hard to get air circulation under the flooring for the de-humidifier to work completely. I didn't tell him it was glued flooring, but just FYI he did mention that the MDF type the joints will swell and it just gets messy from there.

That shouldn't be an issue in your case. I would contact the distributor or installer for information on your particular floor, but I think you are going to get a similar answer about the moisture removal. The dehumidifier won't hurt anything for sure, but I think you can visualize where the water is trapped and how difficult it is to get a path for the water to get out. I am getting into an area of speculation, so I am going to leave it at that.

[lost??]

Hopefully the heat gun works and I don't have to take up too much or damage too much in the process. Thanks for taking the time to research and contact your son, I really appreciate it.

[Studs ad]

Anytime. Sorry I couldn't do more.