Has anyone come across this issue where the self leveling underlayment delaminated and buckled up several inches?
Many years ago, a client of mine had a pipe spring a leak in the old basement and spray water on the sub floor boards and saturate them before it was found. And it swelled and pushed up the floor above which had self leveling underlayment on it and tile above that. It looked like your picture:
Randy, how was that flooring fastened to the floor? Was it on sleepers and that is the infill coming up?
Had that happened before, but had no infill and it was caused by high humidity and it relieved itself in the middle of the floor.
It was a concrete slab with self leveling underpayment. Then laminated floor on top. I done some research on the internet and found similar problems due to improper prep, could be water vapor. There was no signs of water intrusion. I told her to have the flooring pulled up and the delaminated underpayment taken out so I could inspect the original concrete slab.
Randy, if it was a concrete slab with no sleepers for attachment of the flooring, it would have to be a glue down, but the picture shows some sort of underlayment paper under it.
So could it have been a laminate flooring loose laid?
If so, then my guess would be that whatever self-leveling product they used, they did not apply the proper bonding agent and prep to the concrete floor.
The floating laminated wood flooring was good. The concrete leveling mix is what buckled up. From the small area I could see the original concrete slab was clean and dry. I would not have imagined that concrete leveling mix would expand enough to buckle up that high. That leveling mix was an inch thick in that photo.
Hard to tell why it happened without knowing what was used for that leveling mix.
Yes. Certury building flooring restoration.
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Likely preparation or mix error.
That’s what tells me it was a product failure or an installation failure, and I tend to believe the latter. All self-levelers that I have used have the required and necessary bonding agents or Primers that need to be installed. A clean and dry floor would indicate that it was not applied. Without the proper primers the self-leveler product loses its bond quickly due to loss of moisture required for the proper setting time.
I had seen this type of delimitation before. Usually because of wrong prep work and without bonding primer. In one occasion I found active slab cracks and seasonal water penetration. Tar papers is not helping in this installation. It may lock the moisture.