My Floor Seems Hollow

I ve often seen what op describes on click lock flooring where interlocking 6 10mm thick panels are used to tile the area.

My floor seems hollow.

If the surface of the floor is left exposed to water or left in humid conditions for an extended period of time the moisture can saturate the wood flooring and cause crowning. Not if the subfloor is properly prepped. A certain amount of unevenness and slight settlement is not unusual in older solid floors. The opposite of cupping crowning occurs when a board s center is higher than its edges.

A hollow sound when walking on floors is much more common with laminate flooring than it is with vinyl flooring. But in the area in back of the car where the large main door is it sounds like it s hollow underneath the floor. Occasionally a floor will sound hollow even when the tile is well bonded. This can occur when a mortar bed method is used and the mortar has delaminated from the supporting layer or when the subfloor itself is not sufficiently thick or well attached.

The main reason a floor sounds hollow is when the plank bridges a valley or dip in the subfloor thus creating an air pocket. Most likely the floor isn t solid hardwood ie it s probably not 2 3cm thick floorboards laid directly over joists that have sagged. When i walk around in my garage which has a cement floor it sounds more solid in some places as opposed to others. Jpat construction demonstrating how to fix a hollow spot in engineered hardwood floor.

If certain areas of a tile floor sound hollow and other areas do not sound hollow then it is possible that the tile is not bonded in those areas or something to which the tile is attached to is not bonded or has a condition that projects that sound. I suspect the previous answer will rarely apply to the problem as reported by op. Quite possibly your footing is still sitting on solid ground and the hollow spot under the slab is simply an area that settled because it wasn t compacted properly during back fill very common. To the sides and in front of my car it sounds solid if i walk or stomp my foot on the floor there.

A few months ago i was bouncing a basketball inside my double car garage and i noticed a hollow sound near the center of the garage along with excess vibrations when the basketball hit the floor as compared to areas around the edge of the garage near the foundation walls. Unevenness cracked floor tiles floors that sound hollow when stamped on doors that stick gaps below skirtings and or humping to the floor in localised areas are all signs of problems to the concrete ground floor slab beneath.