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I was in position to make some quick money. Sounds familiar so far? Anyway, one of these townhouse developements seems to have a recurring problem in just about every unit. The floors throughout the home squeak but are insanely loud on the second floor. Simple fix right? Pull the carpet back screw down the floor then toss your cape over your shoulder and fly away with a big fat check for a few hours work. Wrong. Everything was fine when I left when low and behold I get a call two days later. The floors are squeaking as if I had never been there. The joist are 24″ O.C….did I mention these are luxury homes. The subfloor is wafer, or whatever you call that engineered sheathing that looks like a whole bunch of wood chips glued together. By the way.. the walls were nailed to the wafer and not to one joist….even the walls perpendicular to joists were not nailed to the joist. My first thought was the nails in the sill plates were making the noise when the joist deflected and returned to rest. So I put holes in the walls and screwed the sill plates to the joist and still we squeak. Any suggestions short of pulling up the wafer and replacing it with plywood?
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Replies
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Ear plugs
*Can you tell what exactly is making the noise? Is it the plywood, the joists, or ???Does any part of thre building make the noise more or less then the rest? What kind of joists are we talking about?
*Dear A,I'm going to break the sacred trust of the building brotherhood and tell you our secret for making a lot of money fixing creaks in the floor.YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.
*Hey Fred,Would that be the building brotherhood of shoody workmanship? I've done many additions. I used 3/4" plywood subfloors glued and screwed to properly sized joists at 16" O.C. I rarely get callbacks for squeaky floors that cannot be resolved with a few more screws or removing some blocking. So I wouldn't know about the practices of YOUR building brotherhood...
*Just a thought...Your problem may hot be the attachment of the plywood to the joist. The noise maybe coming from sheet to sheet movement. I hate to say but I've seen the tongues ripped off sub floor because it swelled up so much from sitting out it wouldn't drive into the groove. If this is the case there is no cost effective remedy I know of.And the board with the really big chips is refered to as OSB oriented strand board.
*A. Caviness ---OSB is not a good substrate for wood floors, the nails will pull out.Since the walls are nailed to the OSB rather than to the supporting lumber, I assume the floor is not built with much care. If that is true you will never get the squeeks out.(My nephew built his house with OSB fasened to trusses. I was asked to fix a squeek. When all was said and done, I had cut the floor out, screwed and glued in 2x blocks, and glued and screwed the OSB back down. Squeek was gone. As I was leaving I walked over 3 more squeeks. I just kept going.)
*George, I know this is way off topic but I don't believe OSB is a poor substrate for wood floors. Using staples, when you have to pull an installed board in a hardwood floor, half the time the staple stays put and pulls right through the tongue of a 3/4" hardwood floor board.
*I have fixed numerous squeeks in floors that turned out to be joists rubbing against a header that they were joist hung from. If accessable, pounding a shim between the joist and the hanger to take up the small space that is allowing the movement usually does the trick. If it is a poor bond between the joist and subfloor, locate the joist and drive the screw right through the carpet and pad. No need to pull it back, the screw will pop through both and nest the subfloor tight to the joist where it belongs. Best of luckRick