Is Moisture Damage Hiding in Your Industrial Flooring?

What to Know About Iden­ti­fy­ing and Treat­ing Mois­ture Damage

Iden­ti­fy­ing Mois­ture Dam­age in Your Indus­tri­al Flooring

Water may be the essence of life as we know it, but it can cer­tain­ly cause a lot of prob­lems, espe­cial­ly when it comes to your indus­tri­al floor­ing. When an excess of mois­ture seeps into your foun­da­tion, it can pose a major threat not only to your floors, but to your entire facility. 

But how can you know if mois­ture dam­age is hid­ing under­neath your floors? And more impor­tant­ly, what should you do about it? Here we’ll go over what caus­es water dam­age, the var­i­ous signs that indi­cate this type of dam­age, and how to pro­tect your floors from fur­ther mois­ture-relat­ed problems.

What Caus­es Mois­ture Dam­age in Floors?

The sim­plest answer is, of course, H2O com­bined with the salts in the con­crete. The real ques­tion, how­ev­er, is how water access­es and dam­ages your floors in the first place. No mat­ter where your indus­tri­al facil­i­ty is built, its foun­da­tion rests on top of soil. And under­neath all that dirt is the poten­tial for ground­wa­ter. This mois­ture may be buried deep beneath the sur­face, poten­tial­ly 50 feet or more, but it will nonethe­less move upwards as heat and pres­sure increase. Even­tu­al­ly, this mois­ture, in the form of water vapor trans­fers through con­crete which is porous so in effect the floor can ​“Breath”!!, If you install a floor­ing sys­tem that doesn’t ​“breath” the mois­ture vapor and salts will con­tin­u­al­ly col­lect under­neath the sur­face of your floors and seep through any voids it can find.

Mois­ture Dam­age: What to Look For

In some cas­es, water dam­age is fair­ly easy to iden­ti­fy. In oth­ers, not so much. This is because mois­ture can dam­age your floors slow­ly and in a num­ber of ways, some more vis­i­ble than oth­ers. For exam­ple, you may imme­di­ate­ly notice stain­ing, crack­ing, and blis­ter­ing, but miss the ear­ly stages of tile delam­i­na­tion or mold growth. Every case is dif­fer­ent. Of course, over time, all of these signs will become appar­ent, and they should all be dealt with as soon as pos­si­ble to avoid a much larg­er problem.

What Can Be Done About Mois­ture Dam­age in Your Indus­tri­al Flooring?

Once you notice poten­tial mois­ture dam­age in your floors, your first step should be to hire an expe­ri­enced con­trac­tor to fur­ther inspect the issue and deter­mine the root cause. These experts can test mois­ture lev­els and then sug­gest solu­tions for mois­ture mit­i­ga­tion. Some of these sug­ges­tions may include resur­fac­ing your floors with a ure­thane cement sys­tem that will hold in slabs that have ele­vat­ed mois­ture read­ings (RH 90%+), and/​or invest­ing in new indus­tri­al floor­ing solu­tions such as con­crete polishing.

There may be no way to com­plete­ly remove mois­ture from the equa­tion, but you can take mea­sures to lim­it the amount of water vapor that makes its way into your indus­tri­al floors. With prop­er floor­ing sys­tems Kaloutas can help you keep your floors bond­ed and stur­dy so they’re ready to with­stand all of your oper­a­tions. To learn more about us and all that we do for your busi­ness, con­tact us here and give us a call at 978−532−1414.

Kaloutas is New Eng­land’s pre­mier con­trac­tor for com­mer­cial & indus­tri­al paint­ing, floor­ing, and relat­ed ser­vices. Estab­lished in 1987, Kaloutas has become a trust­ed resource for gen­er­al con­trac­tors, facil­i­ties man­agers, and build­ing own­ers from Con­necti­cut to Maine. Our team prides itself on high qual­i­ty work­man­ship, jobs done on time & bud­get, and tack­ling com­plex projects that oth­er con­trac­tors don’t have the expe­ri­ence or resources to han­dle. Con­tact us today for a paint­ing or floor­ing esti­mate, or give us a call at 978−532−1414 to learn more.