Anybody with experience fixing a squeak in the floorboards under carpet?

[Radio_Lady]

Jeeze, I was told it would go away in the summertime when wood expands due to moisture.

After seven years of listening to the squeaky floor, I want to do something about it.

Don't recommend the kit by SQUEEK-NO-MORE. We tried it and it didn't work for us. Still have it, though.

Maybe you could suggest something better?

Thanks in advance...

SQUEAKY RADIO_LADY and her WOODEN FLOORS, covered by CARPETING...

Gr-r-r-r-r!

[GOPisEvil]

1. Experience? No. But I saw a piece on "Ask This Old House" once.

Basically, you have to find the loose boards and tighten them down with screws. Then cover the screw heads.

You might be able to search for that question here: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tvprograms/qaarticle/search

[Radio_Lady]

10. Sorry, they want $4.95 for a subscription to their magazine.

I'm not going to do that.

If you have a subscription, perhaps you'd PM me the information, or post it here. There are three articles available. Thanks in advance.

[GOPisEvil]

12. Sorry, I didn't know that.

I don't have a subscription, I just saw this on the TV show.

[Radio_Lady]

25. That's OK. I'm trying to avoid what I think is the real answer --

picking up all the carpet and padding and fixing it the RIGHT way.

Ugh!

Here are the people who built the place in 1998. They do a pretty good job for the money they charge, but there are always little things, right? I should have caught this before the one year anniversary, after which they don't do anything else for the homeowner.

http://www.legendhomes.com

On edit: Actually, that's not true. They did have one family in our housing development who had a home with a deck that may NOT HAVE BEEN SECURED TO THE HOUSE. They came out and fixed that.

[WCGreen]

18. DIY has information on the wbsite for all sorts of projects...

I learned how to make screen refiars the right way, not the WCGreen fuck this thing, god damn piece of shit, MRS. WCGREEN Get out here and help me, Fuckin' screen way that I was taught by by pappy...

[Radio_Lady]

20. What's DIY?? What's a screen refiar??? Please explain.

Unless you wrote this while you were inebriated... not sure I understand your weird post.

[WCGreen]

24. The Wed Site is

http://www.diynet.com/

And they list projects.....

I was trying to be funny........

I assumed too much, please accept my apologies.......

I am, a cad.....

[Radio_Lady]

27. Thanks for the link, WCGreen. Cad? As in Computer Aided Design?

I accept your apologies.

DIY ("Do It Yourself") had a good link for "squeaking floors" -- now I KNOW I have to get someone in to help pull the carpet and pad back to expose the flooring.

[WCGreen]

28. Cad as in a rogue a cad an individual...........

A scoundrel of the worst kind.....

[Radio_Lady]

30. Really? You could have fooled me!

Who made this decision? Did you? Do you really believe it?

What makes you say that?

[WCGreen]

40. It's just the way I am.......

I love to screw around....

[mark11727]

2. Is the SQUEEK-NO-MORE kit the one with the screws...

with heads that snap off after tightening the floorboards to the joists below? Just wondering.

[Radio_Lady]

6. Yes, that's it. We worked with it for hours and got no particularly good

results.

http://shop.store.yahoo.com/squaredrive/fasteners-screws-specialty-screws-floor-repair-screws-squeek-no-more-system.html

[Maddy McCall]

3. I would think that it's completely dependent on the kind of subfloor...

you have.

If you have plywood on top of plank subflooring, you may have to pull up all of the carpet, padding, plywood to get to the plank flooring, because that's probably what's sqeaking. Sounds like a big job, no matter how you approach it.

Is this a very old house?

[Radio_Lady]

7. No, it's a relatively new house, built in 1998.

There is very heavy bedroom furniture on the particular place where it squeaks (in the bedroom, right over the kitchen dining nook). Lifting the carpet and padding is not an option!!!

Just regular footsteps jiggle the ceiling and rattle the hanging lamp. I hear the most amazing squeaks from this flooring mess above.

[Maddy McCall]

9. Sounds like you have a leveling problem.

[Radio_Lady]

15. Maddy, I don't understand. What kind of a "leveling problem"?

[StopTheMorans]

4. shoot mouse, no more squeak.

problem solved *smacks hands together with air of finality*

[Radio_Lady]

17. It's not the mice that are squeaking,

it's the floor... We took care of the mice already.

[BlueJazz]

5. Get a syringe ....fill it with Silicone gel.....Not the liquid kind....

..(you don't want it bleeding through the carpet)...put your ear to the floor....let someone "squeak" the floor, to find the exact spot...inject a small bit of the gel (with syringe)..
You'll probably have to do it a few times...should work...it worked for me.

[Radio_Lady]

8. How do I get a syringe? Where do I purchase liquid silicone gel?

[GaYellowDawg]

11. Contact the nearest plastic surgeon.

Now that Bush's FDA thinks silicone breast implants are OK...
:banghead:

[Radio_Lady]

16. Are you serious? Please explain.

BlueJazz, this is not a joke. Are you pulling my leg? If so, OK. Just let me know.

[BlueJazz]

47. No..I wasn't kidding. I did this years ago. I think the syringe was..

for putting oil on instruments. the Gel came from a medical supply house.
Now that I think about it ..it might not work if the squeek is under the boards (cause by loose screws)....

[ladjf]

13. Our floor is wood veneer. The repairman found the loose

board, drilled a very small hole at that point, injected some type of glue, capped off the hole with filler. That's all there was to it.
However, if you have real planks of hardwood, that may be another matter.

[Radio_Lady]

19. The floor has no hardwood. It's plywood subflooring covered with

pad and carpet.

[caty]

14. I thought you

could fix anything with WD40 and/or duck tape!!:evilgrin:

[Radio_Lady]

22. That's "duct tape" for your information. Where's the .gif for the squirmy

duck held down by tape? Someone has it here! I love it!

[caty]

26. OOPS!!!!!

:silly:

[jmowreader]

36. It's "duck tape" for your information.

Henkel Consumer Adhesives' brand of duct tape is Duck Tape. (The logo is great--a little rubber duck wearing a sailor hat.) These are the jokers who sponsor the "Stuck At The Prom" contest--make a prom dress and a tuxedo out of Duck Tape, have the courage to go to the prom dressed in it, have a photo taken, send it in and Henkel sends $2500 scholarships to the winners, plus $2500 to the school that didn't throw their asses out for coming to the prom dressed in Duck Tape.

Okay, back to the original question: how to stop the Floor from Hell from squeaking. Floors squeak for one reason only: the nails that are holding the subfloor down are coming out and the subfloor is rubbing against them. And the fact that the Squeak Ender didn't work means the joists are warped. (They're wood. Shit happens.) When you stepped on an area that had a Squeak Ender driven into it, the springiness in the wood just pulled the Squeak Ender right out through the bottom of the subfloor...and you have a squeak again.

There is a device you can get at any home store that WILL stop the squeaks. It consists of two plates connected by a threaded rod. One plate screws to the bottom of the subfloor, one to the side of the joist, then the rod is tightened until the subfloor is pulled down tight to the joist. It is very expensive and it can be fun to install--especially if the floor that squeaks is on the second floor and there's a finished ceiling below it--but it will stop the squeak when nothing else will.

What I recommend people try before they call in the heavy artillery--the thing I described in the last paragraph--is to purchase the following items:

* a utility knife
* a five-pound box of three-inch deck screws--NOT drywall screws, but deck screws; they're much stronger
* a tube of Sikabond Construction Adhesive--accept no substitutes
* the most powerful stud finder they have

If you want to get some dressmaker's chalk, by all means do so. And if you don't have a drill, a screwdriver bit that fits the heads of the screws (Deck Mate screws come with the only bit that fits; PrimeSource's deck screws require a number-two Phillips bit, which you've probably got already) and a caulking gun, get those too.

Start by finding the floor joists. Do NOT expect them to be 16 inches on center, which has been the standard for dimensional-lumber joists at least since the end of World War II. They might be...and then again, your house might have been built by the guy who built all the houses in my neighborhood. He put up 500 houses in this subdivision with the floor joists 19.2 inches on center--which saved him from buying two truckloads of 2x10 lumber. (Get your tape measure out and look for the diamonds on the blade. They're 19.2 inches apart.) Okay, the floors are kinda spongy, but what's a little spring in your step among friends?

(Quick note: if you are using engineered floor trusses like TrusJoist, the spacing really is 19.2 inches. They didn't have these when my house was built and this cheap bastard wouldn't have used them anyway.)

Okay, enough of my bitching. You need to make a little pattern on the floor. Go a foot from the wall on both sides of the room and put a little chalkmark on the rug over each joist. Think of these marks as the "1" line. Come toward the center of the room one foot and do the same thing...this is the "2" line. Keep doing this until you're at the middle of the room.

Collect your tools and go to one end of one of the "1" lines.

Next, cut a little slit--a half-inch will do it--in your carpet right over the center of a joist, drive a deck screw through the subfloor into the joist, squirt a little bit of adhesive into the slit and glue the carpet back down.

Go to the next spot on the "1" line and do the same thing. Repeat until both "1" lines are finished.

Repeat with the "2" lines, the "3" lines and so on until you've run out of lines.

And finally, open the windows and stay out of the room for a couple of hours. Sikabond is great stuff but the stench is overwhelming.

[Radio_Lady]

46. jmowreader, this is a fascinating reply. I appreciate the details you

posted. My husband and I will have to revisit this problem when we return from vacation.

Right now, I'm packing as fast as I can!

Good job!... and thanks!

Making peace a priority,

Radio Lady

[I Have A Dream]

37. I think that there is actually a brand of duct tape named...

Duck Tape. Blech...

[Radio_Lady]

42. Learn something new every day. Here's the link to DUCK vs. DUCT TAPE...

http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html

[leftofthedial]

21. I usually just move.

[Radio_Lady]

23. Well, you folks are really quite breezy today. I'd move if I had other

problems with the place, but I love this house! (Just hate those squeaks!)

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

29. It's just the Tell-Tale Heart. I wouldn't worry about it.

Just dig it up and it'll stop making that noise.

[Radio_Lady]

32. That looks like one of the Smothers Brothers!

Yes, Edgar Allen Poe. I remember it well.

There's a whole lot of shakin' goin' on in our house, but it's not from the heart under the floorboards, I'm sure.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

31. Has anybody suggested baking soda?

I heard that somewhere.

[Cathyclysmic]

39. I heard talc..

same thing, I guess...:shrug:

[sniffa]

33. turn the radio voLume up

shouLd take care of that.

[Radio_Lady]

44. Not practical, I'm afraid....

But useful, nonetheless.

[steely]

34. A couple of ideas...

If it's on the first floor and you have a basement and the floor joists are exposed....have someone walk on the squeak and locate it from underneath. You could then use some shakers (from lowes) and shim underlayment where it rests on the joist. Or, you'll need to add some cross braces - cheap too.

If you can't get underneath, and the carpet is umm, older, you could try a finishing nail right thru the carpet. Sounds cheesy, but it works - trick is to ensure you're driving it into the joist from above and you'll want to penetrate the carpet material - use a nail punch. A flooring nail has a larger head that will not go thru the carpet, but is ok if you have a decent pile - (and definitely not a berber). The nail needs to go as far down as possible so it doesn't protrude.

I did the bracing trick - we have hw floors, but the carpeted floors are not hw - the builder told us they wouldn't squeak (liar), so I wound up doing extra work. I also found that walking caused some vibration of the duct work, and that made a sound, so in this case it wasn't the floor squeaking.

[Schema Thing]

35. Is the squeaking wood a plywood subfloor, screwed...

...or nailed down to joist?

Is it in the middle of the floor, or close to a wall? Is the floor accessable from below? (ie: a basement or crawlspace).

It might not cost as much as you think to have a carpet person pull your carpet up and then lay it back down after you have fixed the squeak. In fact, you can likely find a person who could do both.

[Radio_Lady]

43. Yes, it's a plywood subfloor. Not too far from a wall.

Not accessible from below (on finished second floor with kitchen below).

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get someone here who can pull the carpet up. Darn it, I thought I'd have an easy time.

Thanks to all who responded today.

[Schema Thing]

45. The one time I encountered this, it turned out

that the problem (on a second floor, near a wall) was that the wall the squeak was near, was actually an exterior "bump out" sitting window. It took a bit to figure it out, but the squeak was coming because the wall was not pressing down on the subfloor with full force in the sitting window portion of the wall (well, that, and they obviously hadn't screwed the subfloor down good enough under the wall).

I fixed it (after running screws in joist all around the area to try and fix it) by, if I recall correctly, wedging shims between the subfloor and the wall, and also running very long screws into the joist or top plate right under the wall/sitting window.

Well, good luck, perhaps this will help

[Floogeldy]

38. Don't step on that part of the floor.

Well what did you expect from me?

;)

[Radio_Lady]

41. Impossible. My husband would have to walk over the bed to the

other side and circle right to the bathroom.

The squeak is right by the front of his dresser in a path he must take from the bedroom to the bathroom.

But thanks for the suggestion -- I think...

[auntAgonist]

48. baby powder

sprinkle it in the spaces between the boards. It does work.