dishwasher leak/floor damage advice

andrewf75

My dishwasher has leaked and I’m a bit unsure what damage has occurred to the floor around it. It stands on the concrete subfloor in a kitchen “peninsula” so there is flooring either side (engineered wood). The water kind of pooled in the gap between the flooring and was obviously never enough to flow over the top so was completely invisible - apart from a tiny bit where the wood has blackened and what caused me to take off the kickboards and look! We run our dishwasher overnight so it is quite possible this has been going on for weeks if the water has been soaking away each day and then pooling again at night, but apart from some minor damage to the nearest floorboards and the back panel of the peninsula it doesn’t look like much damage.

I thought of an insurance claim, but our excess is £300 and with no serious damage visible I’m not sure if it will be worth it. Likely all that it needs is a couple of floorboards lifting and drying out. I’m really not sure how far under the flooring the water could have gone. But my problem is how do I establish what the damage is without ripping up half the floor? I’m not keen to do it myself and if I get someone in the bill would soon pass the £300 excess of the insurance.

If someone could advise what steps to take that would be great.



Thanks!

missile

We had a leak in our old kitchen which had engineered wood flooring. After it dried out the boards looked good as new. Some months later we noticed some minor shrinkage and warping but not enough to warrant replacing the flooring.

You may be lucky too :-)

andrewf75

Thanks. Did you get anyone out to assess the damage though?

andrewf75

Leaning towards letting it dry out and hoping for the best. Is it worth buying a fan or dehumidifier?

ST1991

Sorry to semi-hijack this thread... is there a way to get laminate floor back to it's former glory if water damaged?

We had a spill (unnoticed) over our laminate that has seeped into one of the joins and caused it to bubble up slightly... it's only been down for 3 months... :mad:

missile

andrewf75 wrote: »

Thanks. Did you get anyone out to assess the damage though?

No, we dried the floor as best we could and waited to see. If the flooring had been badly damaged, we would have had the boards replaced.

missile

ST1991 wrote: »

Sorry to semi-hijack this thread... is there a way to get laminate floor back to it's former glory if water damaged?

We had a spill (unnoticed) over our laminate that has seeped into one of the joins and caused it to bubble up slightly... it's only been down for 3 months... :mad:

Not as far as I know. Laminate is not as resistant to water damage as real wood.

You should be able to lift and replace the damaged boards. I always keep left over boards ........ just in case :beer:

ST1991

missile wrote: »

Not as far as I know. Laminate is not as resistant to water damage as real wood.

You should be able to lift and replace the damaged boards. I always keep left over boards ........ just in case :beer:

Thanks for the advice! I was pretty certain there wasn't a fix, but you never know.

We have kept spare boards... however we would have to take up at least half of the floor to replace them, so for the time being a large rug is doing the job :rotfl: