Trusses are a crucial part of your home's flooring system; this collection of intertwined timber components help to ensure that the flooring system can safely support the weight of the furniture and other items that are placed on top of it. Here are two things that can shorten the lifespan of your home's floor trusses.

Excess moisture

If the floors of your home are regularly exposed to too much moisture, their trusses could deteriorate quite rapidly.

Things such as steam cleaning your carpets, mopping your hardwood floors too often or failing to promptly mop up drink spillages can lead to water seeping through your top layer of the flooring system and into the trusses.

Trusses are usually made from timber. As such, if they are routinely saturated with water a wood decay fungus like 'wet rot' may develop on them (fungi of this kind needs moisture in order to grow and survive). If this should happen, the fungus will slowly weaken the timber, causing it to soften and crumble to the point where it can no longer fully support the weight of the items placed on top of the floor.

Because trusses are hidden from view, you may only begin to notice the effects of this wood decay fungus after it has already caused extensive damage to this part of your home's flooring system. As such, it is important to make a conscious effort to reduce the amount of moisture that seeps into the floors of your property.

For example, you should only clean hard floor surfaces with a slightly damp mop, rather than one which is dripping wet. Additionally, if you use a steam cleaner to sanitise your carpets, make sure not to direct the jet of steam at the carpet fabric for more than a few seconds at a time (to avoid over-saturating it).

Finally, if or when you or other members of your household spill drinks, make sure to mop up the liquid immediately and thoroughly, rather than leaving it to air dry.

Placing too much weight on the floor

Regularly overloading your flooring system by placing too many heavy objects on your floors can eventually lead to the destruction of the trusses. The reason for this is as follows: most trusses have a maximum weight limit that they can support. Whilst exceeding this limit once or twice is unlikely to have any major impact on this part of your flooring system, doing so on a regular basis will eventually cause the trusses to bow and crack.

Once a few of the floor trusses crack, the maximum amount of weight that the flooring system can withstand will be reduced even further. This can lead to sagging of the top layer of the floor. To prevent this from happening, it's important to be mindful of how many heavy items you leave in each of the rooms of your home.

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