Why is my apartment flooring bubbling and getting gaps after cleaning?
Moisture trapped beneath the surface is causing the flooring to swell when wet and pull apart into gaps. This makes the material highly sensitive to water, leaving it prone to damage from basic cleaning and everyday moisture.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Living with the issues until deciding to replace the floors
- 2Attempting to accelerate drying with a hair dryer
- 3Pulling up the cheap vinyl and replacing it
- 4returning the affected planks
- 5avoiding the product brand/line
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“in many places gaps started to appear and they make me really unconfortable, also yesterday I tried cleaning a stain from it and it started swell in that specific part even though i only brushed a bit with a sponge.”source ↗
“Nope. Don’t use that one if it’s the only problem and rerturn them if they’re all like that. My guess is some sort of moisture caused this”source ↗
“Definitely looks like moisture to me. Despite all of the marketing, it is still inferior to LVP on all things water”source ↗
“does anyone know why these issues are appearing and how to solve them”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 21How to tile over an uneven subfloor without tearing it up
- 2How to fix an H-pattern in installed flooring without tearing it all up
- 2Why is my subfloor wavy and dropping?
- 5Why are my floor tiles cracking and tenting?
- 2How to fix a 3/8 inch gap in tongue and groove flooring
- 6New floor has too many dark and light boards grouped together