Q: I had water damage to my engineered wood flooring. We are on top of a basement and the flooring was glued down to OSB. In the process of removing all the flooring, the OSB subfloor was torn up pretty badly.
Every opinion I got said to replace the areas that were gouged out deeply; however, they differ on how to fix the rest of it (there are countless places that range form splintered to gouged pretty significantly.)
Contractor 1- said to glue down and nail plywood over top and that the glue would fill in all the gouged areas.
Contractor 2 – said to sand the floor and then put plywood over top.
Contractor 3 – said the subfloor has to be replaced and that I should insist on it.
The insurance company said something could be ‘floated’ over the floor to level it. We wanted to put down a nailed wood floor. Do you have any suggestions about how the subfloor should be repaired? I can’t seem to find anyone who is an ‘expert’ in this area. I worry that we are going to have squeaking if the gouged areas aren’t prepared properly. Also if there is some type of filler placed in these gouged areas and plywood put on top, won’t the nails from the new flooring go through the plywood to the repaired areas? Can these areas hold the nails? Thanks!
A: I vote with contractor 3. If you had a significant amount of water and it has gotten the sub floor wet and possibly beneath that, it could take weeks or months to fully dry. You could have a breeding ground for mold. Basement flooding? The sub floor has to go. No second guessing on that one. I’ve been down this road before and the results were not pretty.