I am restoring a 4 storey brick building which sustained water damage over the years it was vacant (40+/-). I am trying to reduce and/or eliminate the squeaking in the maple treads of the stairs. I’ve screwed the leading edge down through the oak risers (4/tread) to no avail. I’ve also tried screwing at the rear of the tread which is the site of some of the sound. That didn’t work either. Anybody ever confront this problem with any measure of success? Thanks.
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You've got to identify where the squeel is coming from.
Wood/nail
Wood/wood
At what joint?
Generally movement causes squeeks. Water damage suggests that wood swelled and now is pulling back, possibly with new shapes that need to be filled with glue, possibly injected with a syringe. Can you get to the bottom side of the set? Shims appropriately driven solve most stair headaches.
Squeaking is a result of treads rubbing against baseboard or risers. Unfortunately, out of 216 joints (72 treads, 3 edges/tread) only about a dozen can be remedied with shims or glue. The rest of the joints are too tight to place either a syringe or a shim into. It's beginning to sound like I'm going to have to live with the noise. But thanks for your message anyway.
Can you think of those squeaks as burglar alarms? It doesn't sound like you can get to the underside of the noisemakers to screw, glue, shim or whatever ( I personally build a lot of of stairs and try to nip this in the bud), injecting something on the edges might give some temporary relief, but only temporary...if the rubbing is from tread to skirtboard, you could try screwing the skirt to the studs and pulling it away from the treads...if it's a tread to riser squeak, and you can't get behind them, you're s h i t out of luck and better start thinking of squeaking as old house character, which is kind of nice, in my opinion...let's you know when the kids come home...
Good luck
In fact we haven't really minded most of the squeaking and it is a cheap burglar alarm. There are just a few squeaks, squeals actually, that just seem too exaggerated. I wouldn't want my guests to think they're overweight when they come visit.
Maybe then, rather than glueing it firm, you could spray in some liquid wax to let it rub more smoothly and quiet it down.Excellence is its own reward!
excellent idea! I'll let you know how it turns out.
don't know if this would apply but seems as if I read somewhere recently that for squeeky subfloor you can fill gaps at joists and hangers etc... with expandable foam-best idea I've heard in years- havn't tried it yet though.
If truly the squeeks and squeels are bad then do what you have to, to get underneath. I'm just now closing up the bottom of stairs which had squeeks and pops. Exposing the bottom showed that the three stringers were made of 1"x10"'s. True, the outside ones were tacked to a wall or supported by a curtain wall but the center stringer minus notches was reduced to under 7/8"x4" -- and even that had a split in it. The cure was to glue and screw a 2"x6"x14' sandwich to both sides of the stringer. Gone was the deflection and 90% of the noise. Now I'm hunting down the minor wood-to-wood or nail-to-wood squeeks with shims, adhesive or glycerin. The underside will be covered with a screwed on panel for future access and not the previous lath and plaster from hell. My point is the squeeks may be more than annoying. They may be a sign of structural deficiency. Have a heavy friend walk the stairs and measure deflection.