A few years ago, I replaced the insulation underneath my mobile home. The contractor told me all I needed to do was to staple the insulation to the floor joists, so we did not replace the belly paper. i had a drain line burst under my home about a month ago, though no water touched the insulation or floor boards, as the line runs along the ground. now, a month later, my floors are beginning to buckle. could the humidity in the region(i live in east tx) be causing this because there is no bellypaper? i dont know what else could be causing the floors to buckle.
3 Answers
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Clearly, water vapor is reaching the underside of your floor. The problem is one of inadequate or no ventilation, an inadequate or no vapor barrier and an uncontrolled water source. Not all the facing on insulation is a vapor barrier. It can be just plain old brown paper. There is a dead air space between your insulation and the underside of your floor. Water vapor is passing through the insulation into the dead air spaces and condensing on the underside of the floor. It is trapped there as there is absolutely no ventilation. Pull out all the insulation. Remove any type of skirt around your home and lay poly on the ground under your home weighted down so that it stays put. If there is little or no Natural air movement run a couple of good sized fans underneath I had a moisture caused buckled floor once and while it was still damp underneath I weighted it down with a number of cement blocks and left them there until the underside tested dry (over two weeks). It solved almost all of the problem. Maybe I just got lucky, but if you don’t do it the buckling is not going away after you’ve eliminated the water.
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Do mean buckle, or are they swelling? I had a mobile home in NJ, and suffered a “pipe burst” , plastic, from freezing.. Most floors in mobile homes are made from a particle board, and when they get wet or sweat they swell… The easiest way I found to correct that is, tear out the old floor, and replace with 1/2 inch plywood.. It’s really not that expensive, and the long term benefits, believe me, well worth it!
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Absolutely, the moisure in the air of the crawl space is being absorbed by the floor. The water from the burst line didn’t have to touch it. You need to get some ventilation, such as fans down there, get the floor dried out and replace that vapor barrier or you are going to have rot in addition to the swelling.