How to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor

How nice to walk on the new wooden floor - feet warm, and the room smells good. Also, it should be noted the noble beauty of the material. However, after some time, joy can be replaced by irritation, as the floor begins to creak. How to eliminate the creak of the wooden floor in the apartment, keeping its beauty? What to do with the old wooden floor? Answers to these questions can be found in the article.

Causes of

There is nothing good in creaking floorboards, perhaps everyone agrees with this statement, but before proceeding to consider options for eliminating the creak of a wooden floor, it is worth mentioning that there are several of these options and it’s necessary to make a decision in favor of this or that method. based on the causes of creaking sounds. More precisely, the cause of a squeak is always the friction of separate parts of a wooden floor against each other, but there may be several causes of friction.

• Uneven fastening lag. If the support bars on which the floor boards rest are not installed in the same plane, then there will be gaps between them and the boards, which means that under loads, the boards in these places will bend and rub against each other, resulting in a creak.
• Shrinking boards. During the operation of the board may be slightly reduced in size as a result of moisture loss, which will lead to the formation of gaps between them, this may be the cause of the squeak.
• If nails were used as fasteners for floor installation, they will decrease in size as a result of oxidative reactions. There will be a "walk" of the boards due to the weakening of their attachment to the bearing beams, as a result the floorboards will creak.
• When there is no necessary gap between the floorboards and the walls as a result of their small displacements resulting from the loads, a creak will appear.

Remedies

Speaking about how best to get rid of the squeak, it should be said that before proceeding to work, you need to assess the overall situation. The point is that if only a few boards creak, then you can limit them to replacing or strengthening, and if the floor creaks everywhere, then you should resort to more radical measures.

If the floor creaks in many places, then you should think about its complete bulkhead. To do this, the old boards should be dismantled and assess the condition of the supporting bars. If it is satisfactory? and lags are strictly in the same plane, then new ones are mounted on the place of the old boards. In principle, this method of eliminating the squeak is suitable in all cases, but it is quite costly both from the material side and from the point of view of labor intensity.

When the squeak is caused by uneven lag fixation, i.e. there are cracks between them and the boards, wooden wedges can be used to remove them and eliminate the source of unpleasant sound. With the help of a mallet, the wedge is hammered into the gap between the board and the bar, as a result of which, the board is more firmly fixed and ceases to creak. When applying this method, you need to know that over time such a seal may become loose and the creaking will return. For additional fixation, a screw can be screwed through the board and into the wedge.

Another way to deal with the creak is to additionally fix the creaking board using anchors. Here it is worth saying that this method is used when there is a concrete base under the floor. A through hole is drilled through the plank and the support beam through which the plank is pulled to the base with an anchor. This method is sufficiently effective, however, it is associated with considerable expenses for consumables.

When the boards are attached to the bearing logs with nails, squeaks may occur due to the weakening of the mount. In this case, the creaking of the floor can be removed if the loosened board is additionally attracted to the timber using self-tapping screws. You should know that they need to be screwed on both sides of the timber at a certain angle to it. It should be remembered that the screws need to be screwed so that their cap was slightly recessed into the tree. The grooves can be covered with a putty, close in tone to the color of the board.

In the case when the creak appears due to slight bending of the board, you can resort to a fairly simple way to eliminate it. To do this, it is necessary to drill a squeaking floorboard and fill the space under it with foam. After it dries, the foam hardens and the board stops bending, which means that the creaking disappears. It is worth saying that the use of this method is quite controversial. The thing is that over time, under the influence of loads, the foam is likely to collapse and the creak will appear again. Although, if we are talking about a board that does not have frequent loads, for example, a board along a wall, in order to save time, you can do the same.

If the creaking of the floor takes place on a large surface, but you don’t want to make a complete bulkhead of the floor or not, the following method can be used. Right over the old floor are laid and fixed sheets of plywood. You should choose a thick enough plywood, from 12 mm. Sheets are fastened with wood screws. This method is simple, but you should not save on plywood. Not enough thick material can lead to the fact that the creaking will return, and to a greater extent. It is necessary to observe the uniformity of attracting the sheets to the floor, for which it is necessary to maintain a distance of about 20 cm between the screws.

As another way to eliminate the squeak of wooden floor, we can note the strengthening of the carrier lag. And to be more precise, we are talking about the installation of additional support bars. This method is time consuming and requires a sufficient amount of time, but at the same time the creak is eliminated completely. Boards for additional logs are fastened with self-tapping screws.

Options for how to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor, there is enough. It is necessary to choose the method based on the cause of the squeak. Sometimes it will be enough just to additionally fix the creaking floorboard with screws or self-tapping screws, and in some cases it is impossible to do without a complete reassembly of the floor and replacement of all its elements.

Video: the way to eliminate squeaking wooden floor