Creaking floorboards

[Yeti]

Myself and parents moved into our new house this weekend. It's pretty sweet, but as you can guess from my topic, the floorboards in my room creak quite badly.

It's already starting to drive me insane. I've been doing a little reading up on it tonight. Who here has successfully remedied this?

[diebitter]

You screw em down instead of nailing. I've only read this, not done practical on it.

[rusellmj]

I'm not reccomending this or suggesting it's a solution.
That said, I've worked with something similar to, but not exactly wood flooring. The wood I worked with was much thicker. To repair a loose board problem we would drill a small hole (1/8" I think) at an angle into the next board. Then pump the hole full of epoxy. The wood was tounge and groove so the epoxy would run along (probably a foot) the goove before it oozed up. For one loose board we used single use epoxy tubes. The epoxy is two part with a mixing tube. If we had alot of work we had a large injector that held several gallons of epoxy.
The epoxy we used was the same color as the wood but I suppose you could plug the holes with wood filler and no one would be the wiser.

[tonypaladino]

Running some screws into the joists can work on isolated areas, but will not work well for an entire room, plus you will have exposed screws.

Unfortunatly, The only real way to fix it involves removing the floorboards and fixing any spaces between the subfloor and joists with either pieces of wood, caulking or cement.

Another option would be to get carpeting installed. Run screws down to the joists in the creaky areas prior to installation, and get a carpet with thick padding.

A temporary fix is to dump baby powder all over the floor, spread it around, and then jump around a lot to let the powder settle in. It will reduce the friction between the subfloor and joists, but it will wear off eventually.

[Yeti]

FWIW, the room is and will remain carpeted.

[tonypaladino]

[ QUOTE ]
FWIW, the room is and will remain carpeted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Carpet will have to come up, 2" or longer screws in to the creaking areas, and then lay the carpeting back down.

[Yeti]

Cheers guys.

I now want to hear from those who have had miraculous success and will gladly reassure me that all will be fine.

FWIW the baby powder thing sounds fun and I will definitely be trying it.

[tonypaladino]

I've personally done the screws into joists for one area of the room. It was wood flooring that was covered with linolium, so I had to use a stud-finder to find the joists, but after the carpet went down no more squeeks.

[runout_mick]

I'm a carpenter, and agree that the most effective remedy would be to remove the carpet and screw the flooring to the joists.

If this is not an option, and the ceiling under the floor is unfinished, you may want to try screwing the joists to the flooring from the underside (using screws short enough not to poke through...duh) at a 45 degree angle through the top of the joist into the floorboard. This is not AS effective, but can substantially reduce the movement your floor currently experiences.

Hope this helps...

[Yeti]

Cheers guys.

Quick question, when you screw them down, should it immediately stop squeaking or does it take a few days?

[tonypaladino]

Should stop since there will be no more rubbing of the joists and boards.