The floor of the house creaks what to do. The floors creak what to do without disassembling. What to do so that the floors do not creak

02.11.2019

Consumption ecology.Homestead:Perhaps, there is no stronger irritant than a creaking wooden floor. It is especially annoying if such a phenomenon overtakes residents shortly after a major overhaul and you have to tear off the finishing coating. Today we will tell you what to do if wooden floors creak, and how to avoid it in the future.

Perhaps there is no stronger irritant than a creaking wooden floor. It is especially annoying if such a phenomenon overtakes residents shortly after a major overhaul and you have to tear off the finishing coating. Today we will tell you what to do if wooden floors creak, and how to avoid it in the future.

Causes of a creak

Actually, there is only one ultimate cause of a creaking floor - friction between two poorly fixed parts. But there are three typical places in which such a phenomenon can be observed near a wooden floor.

In the simplest case, the floor creaks due to friction between adjacent floorboards: one of them sags under load and scrapes against the next one. Such a creak has a characteristic dry sound and is quite easily detected when the floor boards are sequentially pressed through.

A more characteristic creak with a thin squeak arises from the weakened nailing of the boards to the logs. Rusted metal inside dry wood creates a really nasty screech and is much more difficult to locate due to the fact that the nail heads are usually hidden under several layers of paint.

Third and most rare view squeak - loose connections of composite logs and jumpers between them. The appearance of such a creak is typical for frame and multi-storey buildings with complex system wooden floors. The sound of the floor when walking in such cases is muffled and crackling.

Do I need to rip off the floor

If the wooden floor was laid with a grooved board for painting or varnished, then the boards will not have to be torn off. It is quite possible to eliminate the creak between the floorboards from the surface, plus there is an occasion to restore the wooden floor, smooth out the irregularities with putty, and renew the paintwork.

In some cases, repairs may require the removal of the finish pavement or the boardwalk underneath. For example, if the boards of the subfloor creak, on top of which the finishing one is laid - la minat or linoleum. In such cases, the finishing floor is sorted out, performing the required manipulations and getting rid of the creak, and then laying it back.

If the lag system is the source of the creak, then more extensive repairs will have to be carried out. The greatest difficulty lies in the localization of the creaking connection, which is almost impossible to do blindly. Therefore, the disruption of the floor boarding cannot be avoided.

Wedging method

The creaking ends of the floorboards can be wedged together, thereby concentrating friction in several places and avoiding the effect of a string. For this, ordinary wood chips or wedges are used with a thickness of 0.5 to 3 mm and a width of up to 30–35 mm.

This method is good for eliminating squeaks in old solid board floors, where cracks of uneven thickness have appeared as a result of shrinkage and warping. At the widest point of the creaking joint, the first wedge is driven in, then a few more are added with an indent of 50–80 cm. To facilitate the entry of the wedge, you can expand the joint with a chisel, hammering it by 3-5 mm.

Wedging is a rather meticulous process, but this is almost the only method of local repair of a creaking floor without disrupting the flooring. After compacting the boards, it is necessary to seal the cracks with putty; in the simplest case, a mixture of PVA and small sawdust will do.

Reinforcement of the floor

The reason for the appearance of a creak on the ends and fasteners of the boards may be insufficiently tight pressing of the flooring to the logs. This is a typical disease of a wooden floor: after several cycles of drying, the nails can loosen and the entire flooring becomes loose.

The essence of strengthening the floor is to restore the density of pressing the boards with self-tapping screws, which do not lose their pressing quality over time. The catch is that by pressing a warped board in one place, you can loosen the fastening at other points, so it would be right to reinforce the entire floor at once.

Another subtlety is the need to drill the boards before screwing in the screws in order to avoid catching the threads in them. The method is ideal for eliminating creaking in draft floor. Fine coatings can also be strengthened with self-tapping screws, but the traces of the caps will have to be masked with putty, which, moreover, must be matched to match the wood when opening the floors with varnish.

The greatest difficulty is to determine the location of the lag if the traces of the fastening of the flooring are hidden. Among all the methods, two of the most effective can be distinguished: drilling with control of the exit of the drill in order to determine the installation step of the lag and the breakdown of the edge boards.

Boardwalk busting

Overhauling a wood floor is the only way to eliminate creaking with a guarantee, without requiring a significant investment. And with creaking lags, there is practically no alternative to this method.

The point is to consistently rip and reattach the boards without changing their order for a tighter fit. First, 3-5 boards are removed from one edge, then, with good additional light, they visually assess the space under the floor, the safety of the lag, and the presence of harmful organic matter.

When iterating, the first board is fixed and torn off one by one after checking and fixing each subsequent board. All boards are checked for rotting and damage by pests, unusable ones are replaced with new ones of the same thickness, adjusting the ends with a planer for tight joining.

To avoid the appearance of a creak between the floorboards in the future, you can rally the boards on wooden dowels and tighten them tightly car jack. If there is no need for hidden fastening, it is recommended to use self-tapping screws - two for each place of fastening to the logs.

surface reinforcement

Not very budget, but very effective way getting rid of the subfloor from creaking - laying plywood on it with frequent attracting fastening with self-tapping screws. The thickness of the flooring must be at least 12 mm, fastening is carried out in each board in two rows in a checkerboard pattern no further than 30-35 mm from the edge.

In addition to self-tapping screws, a mixture of sawdust or mineral chips with bustilate glue will help to achieve high-quality adhesion. It is important to arrange the flooring sheets in such a way that the joints between them do not contribute to the deflection of the boards in the future. Ideally, you should divide the additional flooring into two layers of 6–8 mm each, fastening them together with an adhesive mixture and carefully consider the scheme for dressing the joints.

The method is characterized by high technological complexity. In addition to high-quality tightening of self-tapping screws and the correct arrangement of sheets, it is required to remember the layout of the boards so that each of them is strengthened and tightened. To do this, the location of the joints is marked on the walls with risks, along which the thread is pulled or the lines are beaten off with a coloring cord.

Other options

There are also many "folk" ways to get rid of the creak between the floorboards or in the places where they are attached. Contrary to popular belief, sealing the gaps between the boards with an adhesive mixture does not give an effect, at least a long-term one.

It is better to warm up the joint with a high-quality building hair dryer and pour melted paraffin or stearin into it. The method works in a similar way with the impregnation of boards with vaseline or vegetable oil. Just do not use machine and motor oils, they are not environmentally friendly.

As a preventive measure to prevent squeaking, it is recommended to tightly assemble the floor boards using tongue-and-groove ends or oak dowels. It is also possible to process the ends of the boards with compounds that reduce friction - silicone sealant or rubber paste. Instead of ordinary nails, it is better to use ruffed ones, which are less prone to loosening. published

Photo: at the request of Yandex and Google

The problem of creaky floors is not only faced by residents of old houses. A poorly laid new laminate can also annoy you with hateful sounds. We propose not to endure and not sneak around the apartment on tiptoe when someone close to you is sleeping, but to radically solve this problem. There are a lot of options for eliminating creaking - choose your own.

Why do floors creak?

The boards are not firmly fixed to the underfloor rungs. As a result, inevitable loosening occurs, which is why the floor creaks;
The simplest and most natural reason is that the tree has “shrunken”. Unfortunately, with natural material, this happens when the floor serves you for a very long time;
Special wooden linings sagged;
Nails and screws loosened;
The ends of the boards move when walking on the floor;
There is insufficient clearance between the wall base and the floor.

The floors in the apartment creak: we offer several options for fixing the problem

Option 1: polyurethane foam

It cannot be said that this method will help one hundred percent, but with a not very large creak, it really works. Ordinary mounting foam is used, which is carefully blown into the underground. This is done quite simply, which means that even a beginner can handle the elimination of the creak.

An indisputable advantage of this option is that it is not necessary to remove the boards from the floor. It is enough to drill a certain number of neat holes and blow foam into it. It can also be poured into the cracks between the boards. The principle of operation is simple: the filled foam will harden and expand, as a result of which the floorboards will be pressed down and the creak will disappear.

However, this option has two obvious drawbacks. First, this method is quite costly. You will need a lot of foam, but good material from a trusted manufacturer is not cheap. Secondly, fragility. Unfortunately, after a while, the creak will return again, because the foam is destroyed and pressed through. However, this may not happen, because it all depends on what kind of load your floor experiences daily. If a we are talking, for example, about an office where people are constantly moving, then the creak will return for sure. But in an apartment, this method will be much more durable. The following answers to the question why the floor creaks, read below.

Option 2: driving wedges

If the wooden floor creaks, then the wedges will come in handy. This option is more durable than polyurethane foam, and much less expensive. True, you will have to work hard.

Ideally, if you have the opportunity to work with the "lower" floor (for example, in the country or in the house). In this case, the wedges must be knocked out between the boards themselves and the beams. Previously, each wedge should be lubricated with high-quality glue.

If you can’t get close to the underground, then just drive wedges of wood into the gaps between the floorboards. There can be a lot of such gaps, and the work will be quite painstaking, but believe me: it's worth it. Your working tools are a cone-shaped puncher and a regular hammer. Keep in mind that the approximate distance between the 2 wedges should be approximately 0.17-0.22 millimeters. Wedges should be knocked out in such a way that top part in no case went over the top of the board. Now you know what to do so that the floor does not creak. But that's not all: what if you like the next option more?

Option 3: self-tapping screws

Another sensible answer to the question of what to do if the floors in the apartment creak. True, there is one “but”: you will only have to work with self-tapping screws if the floor from the boards, which is mounted on a concrete base, creaks. The essence of the method is simple: each place where an unpleasant sound comes from is “stretched out” with self-tapping screws. The huge advantage of working is that you will forget about the creak for a really long time.

You should start by identifying problem areas and searching for beams / logs (they should be marked on the floor, for example, with chalk). It is not difficult to determine the area where the lag is located: as a rule, these are the heads of screws or nails. With their help, the floorboards are attached to the beams. Then it is worth making sure that no communications, wires, and so on pass in the places found.

Next, we need a drill: in the place of the creak, we drill a hole through the board, after which, using a thin wire, we accurately measure the distance to the concrete surface. Let's say you got a distance of eight centimeters. In this case, you need to use self-tapping screws with a length of at least nine to ten centimeters. It remains only to screw the screws through the points of contact of the boards and lags. We do this all the way until we feel that we have touched concrete. In most cases, one problematic squeaky place takes from two to four screws. As a result, thanks to the self-tapping screws, additional support is created to support the beams. The floor, as it were, rises in the “sore” place, and the unpleasant sound disappears. It is only important to check that each screw head is well recessed. As you can see, eliminating the creak without opening the floor is easy!

Option 4: plywood

So, your chipboard floors creak. To forget about this sound forever, it is enough to attach simple plywood over the material. Please note that the plywood used must be no thinner than twelve millimeters. Plywood must first be cut into squares small size. After that, make sure your subfloor is completely dry. Plywood is fixed to the floor with screws or special glue. Between the "squares" you need to leave gaps of nine to ten millimeters. For more information on how to eliminate floor creaking in an apartment, see the video below:

Option 5: anchor method

Now let's try to remove the unpleasant creaking of the floor with the help of special metal anchors. The reliability of the result of such work is one hundred percent. But there is a significant disadvantage: this is the most expensive and labor-intensive option.

So, if you decide not to change the floor, then you will have to work according to the so-called through-installation principle. Its essence is that the metal anchor must pass through the flooring. First, using a puncher, you need to drill a small hole in the concrete through the cross beams and the floor. Next, a special outer shell made of metal is installed. It is into it that the anchor must be screwed directly. Thus, you fix the lag with them.

Keep in mind that the top of the anchor must not protrude above the deck. To do this, the entrance of the hole must first be drilled using a nozzle of a slightly larger diameter. Ideally, if you can install such anchors around the perimeter of the entire room.

On a note! The optimal distance between the anchors is ninety centimeters. Based on this, plan how many fasteners you will need. Now you know what to do if the floors in the house creak!

AT last years wooden floors are becoming more and more popular. These and parquet, and laminate, and made in the old fashioned way, but using modern technologies plank floor.

New parquet floor

Wood is the most environmentally friendly floor covering, it is pleasant to walk on it with bare feet and it is quite easy to care for it. However, wooden floors have several rather serious drawbacks: sometimes they creak.

Wooden floors are also prone to other troubles: often such a floor not only irritates with a creak, but also sags underfoot. The cause of both these shortcomings is the same.

To understand why a wooden floor creaks and get rid of annoying sounds, first of all, let's look at how it works.

floor construction

Any wooden floor consists of a base, a layer and a coating. There are several ways to arrange a wooden floor, but in this case we are interested in a design using a lag: it is she who, sooner or later, begins to treacherously creak.

Such a floor is arranged very simply: wooden beams-logs are laid on a concrete screed, boards, sheets of plywood or chipboard are laid on top of this frame of beams, and parquet, laminate, linoleum or carpet are glued on top.

Why do floors creak? There are many reasons for the creak. Simply put, the sound that irritates us so much comes from the fact that the wooden parts of the floor screed rub against each other. Particularly creaky can be floors in which there are several wooden layers: for example, sheets of plywood are laid on the boards, and a finish coating is glued to them.

Imagine that the beams-lags lie loosely on the concrete screed. When the floor is loaded, plywood or chipboard transfers the load to the logs, and they sag slightly.

By themselves, they rarely creak (only if they have cracks), but when the bent lag slightly springs after deflection, this is enough for its upper edge to begin to rub against the bottom of the plywood or chipboard sheet, transferring friction to the overlying wooden layers. And there is a creak.

Does the wooden floor creak? This is due to the friction of the boards among themselves, and chipboard creaking, touching each other edges.

No matter how competently the wooden floors are laid, over time they all become more or less "talkative". This is due to the fact that the floor structure weakens over time: fasteners loosen; dry out, become saturated with moisture or partially collapse its wooden parts; gaps appear between the parts of the floor. But creaky floors are not uncommon in new homes.

Why do new floors creak?

We "treat" the floor

Whether it's old or new, the reasons why your floor creaks are always the same. But if in old buildings even floors of high quality in the past dry out or collapse over time, then in new buildings flaws in the floor construction are most often caused by its improper assembly or violation of its laying technology. The only exception to this rule is the case when the house itself shrinks (for example, when the foundation is incorrectly calculated).

The wooden floor creaks and in such cases:

It is assembled from insufficiently dried building parts and materials. Logs and boards dry out, plywood sheets or change sizes, and gaps appear between wooden surfaces.
There is no layer between the lags and plywood or other coating (for example, a waterproofing layer protects against creaking) or the substrate for parquet or laminate is not properly made;
Logs and boards are fastened insufficiently reliably or incorrectly: their ends move relative to each other;
The wooden coating is not firmly attached to the logs (nails or self-tapping screws pop out of the springy boards);
The technological gap near the walls was not made.

If the thickness of the logs, boards, plywood is incorrectly selected; the distance between the lags is not maintained - the floor can also creak. Logs are made of timber with a minimum size of 10 x 8 centimeters, the step between them should not exceed 60 centimeters (the optimal distance is about 40 cm). For flooring, it is advisable to use boards no thinner than 35-40 mm, and plywood - from 20 mm, otherwise they will sag.

Silence the floor

Most reliable way get rid of unpleasant sounds - hauling floors. However, this is not always possible. The following techniques will help you, if not forever, then for a long time to make your floor silent.

One board creaks in a plank or parquet floor

Floors on logs

If you can definitely find the very board that responds to every step with an unpleasant sound, then all you need is a drill, a hammer, a piece of board and any superglue (for example, “Moment”).

Drill several holes in the joints between the creaky board and adjacent boards (drill diameter 8-10 mm, holes are made at a distance of 15-25 cm from each other). You need to drill at an angle of 45 degrees, while half of each hole falls on one board, half on the other.

Now cut out wedges 10 cm long and as thick as the holes from a piece of board and also spread with glue. After a few minutes, hammer these pins into the grooves and cut them so that they do not stick out.

If the cause of the squeak is a nail that has popped out that fastened the board to the log, fixing the floor is even easier. Take a new nail a little longer than the old one, and to make the connection stronger, nail the board to the log at a 45 degree angle. Additionally, a nail in a problem board can be secured with screws that will prevent it from popping out again.

For fastening, you can use not only nails, but also long wood screws. Sometimes it is advised to cut off the heads of the screws after removing the creak, especially if you are fixing a parquet board. Of course, if you cut off the head of the screw and sand the repair site, it will be almost imperceptible. However, this should not be done, at least not immediately. You may need to re-tighten the fastener on the naughty board if it squeaks again, or loosen it.

A board with a lag can also be connected in the same way as in the previous case, by driving wedges lubricated with glue at an angle into it.

Sometimes after such an operation, after a few days, the board rises and starts to creak again. In this case, you will have to additionally attach the lag to the base in the manner described below.

The floor creaks in different places

Find the loudest board in the squeaky area, or the loudest floor area and the adjacent joist.

Finding out exactly where the lag goes is quite simple: it will be pointed out by the nails with which the floorboard or other covering is nailed to them. Drill a hole with a diameter of at least a centimeter and measure the distance from the floor surface to the concrete screed. Usually it does not exceed 10-12 centimeters.

For fastening, an anchor bolt of the appropriate diameter and a length of 15 centimeters is used. Previously drilled hole it goes deep into the concrete screed with a concrete puncher and an anchor is hammered into it, which will firmly fasten the board to the ceiling.

If you install anchors in places where the boards lie on the logs, and drive the anchor through the log, you can get rid of a fairly large creaking area.

Creaks all over the floor

If the place of the greatest creak cannot be determined, because the floor creaks all over (and sometimes sways underfoot), you will have to strengthen it entirely.

This usually happens because under the beams-lags that lie on a concrete screed - the cause may be the drying (deformation) of the lags - voids appear. You can identify them by ear by tapping the floor with a metal rod or hammer: over the voids, the sound of the blow will be muffled.

Drill a 15-20 mm hole in the covering and pour into the space between the floor surface and the base cement mortar(ratio of water and cement 1:1). When it is full, hammer the hole with a wooden shift and clean it.

A more reliable way to strengthen the floor from chipboard boards or a parquet floor is to fill the underground space with heated tar.

plywood laying

Sometimes it is filled mounting foam. However, the foam is quite plastic, and its density depends on the load on the floor, temperature and humidity in the room. Perhaps the floor will stop creaking, but will continue to sag. Foam can fill not all the underground space, but only its creaky section. On average, this method helps to get rid of unnecessary sounds for three years.

Lag creaks

This rarely happens, but it still happens when a log made of raw timber dries up and cracks. The internal crack of the log can be repaired with PVA glue. The disadvantage of this method is that the glue can get on the boards closest to the log, tightly fastening them together. It will no longer be possible to disassemble such a connection for a more serious repair: this fragment of the floor will have to be cut out and completely replaced.

Threshold creaks

Under the creaking threshold, wooden wedges of well-dried hardwood are driven in. The wedges are made with a not very large bevel, so that when propping up the canopy, they do not lift it much. The protruding parts are filed. If, after propping up, the threshold has ceased to creak, it is reinforced with a bar from the side of the wedges - in addition to fastening, it covers the gap formed between the threshold and the floor.

The floor creaks due to the fact that the building has shrunk

As is known, the greatest shrinkage is wooden houses. So, houses made of timber in the first year after construction can lose 10% of their height. It often makes no sense to repair the floor in such cases, since it not only creaks, but can also become shaky or warp.

The only way out is a complete floor resurfacing. Sometimes, after checking the quality of the concrete base, you have to make a new concrete screed along the “beacons”, and then, taking into account the features of the building, lay logs and lay the floor.

Adjustable lags

Dismantling of the old coating

One of the ways to prevent the destruction of the floor structure during operation is to use not ordinary, but adjustable lags. They are beams in which threaded holes for polymer bolts (racks) are made. The log is installed directly on concrete base, through the racks, through holes are drilled into the concrete and a dowel is hammered into them. This design is exceptionally strong and does not allow the floor to loosen.

Adjustable joists can be lowered and raised by rotating the stand bolts, which allows you to get a perfectly horizontal surface. The height of the lags above the ceiling can be from 5 to 20 centimeters.

After aligning the beams with respect to the horizon, the plastic bolts of the rack are cut to size and a rough coating is fixed on the logs (DPS shields, plywood, etc.). The thickness of the rough coating must be at least 20 millimeters.

Adjustable joists are more expensive than conventional joists, but the flooring laid on such joists has no gaps, does not sag or creak. This means that soon after construction is completed, you will not have to take up tools again, correcting a “talkative” or swinging floor.

To reduce the likelihood of squeaking during possible drying of the lags and boards, a damping pad is placed between the lags and boards (chipboard boards, plywood). It could be waterproofing or roll insulation. For parquet and laminate there are special substrates. If they are laid, and the floor creaks, the substrate needs to be re-layed.
The loose laying of boards or shields reduces the likelihood of creaking: a gap of no more than a millimeter is left between them. It will not affect the strength of the coating, but it will prevent the wooden edges from touching and, moreover, rubbing against each other.
It is better to lay plywood on boards on glue or mastic: if such a floor once begins to sag, there will be fewer rubbing surfaces in its structure, since plywood and boards will move as a single structure.
If the floor creaks due to the fact that gaps have formed between the joists and the screed, wooden wedges can be placed under the joists. However, this method is only suitable for a plank floor and is quite traumatic for it: for this type of repair, you need to tear off the boards after 50-80 cm. In addition, the crests of the boards are damaged and it is impossible to re-adjust the floor.
If the floor does not always creak, track which days the creak occurs. Maybe the weather is changing? Wooden floors involuntarily warn that dry weather will soon give way to rainy weather, or vice versa - after a week of rain, the sun will finally come out.

For a home master who does not have a building education and experience, information becomes relevant why a wooden floor creaks, usually after several years of operation. The reason is the lack of a stable geometry of the structure, loosening of its individual elements, leading to a decrease in strength.

The construction of a wooden floor (rough or floor covering) is completely maintainable, so you can get rid of the creak in any case, but using various technologies.

Before you remove the creak of a wooden floor in an apartment or house on their own, you need to understand the causes of the sounds. A creak occurs due to the friction of individual structural elements with each other:

Finally, logs or beams can rot in separate areas, part of the boardwalk attached to them touches adjacent boards attached to sections of the bar that has retained the spatial geometry.

Important! If the floor creaks due to the boards bending under your feet (they touch each other), then you will need overhaul(dismantling) of the boardwalk. You will either have to reduce the step of the lag, or increase the thickness of the board.

There are several ways to get rid of a squeak, depending on the purpose of the floor (groove board finish or subfloor edged board), its design and the hardware used (nail or self-tapping screw).

Solutions

To get rid of the creak of a wooden floor on your own, you need to restore its design according to the technology:

any lumber can change geometry (drying, warping) with a change in humidity, therefore, it is necessary to treat with an antiseptic and periodically impregnate with the same liquid during operation;
the logs must be rigidly fixed to the base, and the boards must be tightly pressed against them with self-tapping screws or nails with a screw notch;
it is forbidden to use wooden wedges to level the log in the horizontal level; TWO polymer wedges with a corrugated surface should be used as a set;
the laying step of the lag should be calculated depending on the operational loads and the thickness of the board of the rough / finishing floor in order to avoid critical deflections;
each board must be fastened with two self-tapping screws to one log to ensure a stable position in the transverse direction.

Advice! The most difficult option is the dismantling of the flooring and its re-laying after the revision of the lumber. In order not to open the floors completely to provide access to rotten bars, holes and hatches can be cut down.

In other words, all methods of getting rid of floorboard creaking come down to additional fixing of wooden elements to each other with self-tapping screws, pins or wedging. More rarely, the internal cavity is foamed to provide a large supporting surface, or sheet materials are laid on top of the plank flooring, distributing point loads evenly over its entire area.

Fixing with screws/anchors

If the home master does not know what to do to eliminate the creak, the method of additional fixation of the boards to the lags is most often intuitively applied. Such a scheme is suitable only for fully preserved logs with normal support on the base. If the logs hang on the boards (the wedges flew out, the lumber dried up) or partially rotted, this technology will not bring results.

In addition, when fixing the flooring elements, the features of the hardware should be taken into account:

self-tapping screw with incomplete thread - presses the tongue to the lags without a gap, since the smooth part "falls" into the hole made by the threaded part of the hardware;
self-tapping screw with full thread - rigidly fixes the position of the board relative to the log with an existing gap, since the engagement force is very high, both inside the wood of the log and the board.

Therefore, there are three ways to fix the boardwalk elements with self-tapping screws:

Important! The last two methods are less reliable than the first, so they are used in emergency cases.

It is impossible to drown the screw heads into hardwoods; it is necessary to make a "sink" with a countersink. To do this, you can use a similar self-tapping screw, cutting off the head with a hand engraver (1.5 - 2 cm in length) and making inclined notches like a cutter with the same tool.

Coating contraction

The floorboards are laid close to each other, have a thickness of 2 - 5 cm. Therefore, by compressing the dried material with each other in separate areas, it is possible to increase the rigidity of the horizontal structure and eliminate creaking at no additional cost. There are two methods for this:

Important! In both cases, existing nails or self-tapping screws must be removed from the boards prior to screeding to allow the deck members to move horizontally.

wedging

If the defective area is far from the wall, it is difficult to pull off the wooden floors in the previous way. Therefore, the floorboards are wedged in place according to the technology:

the floorboard is processed with sandpaper;
a rail of the desired width and length is selected, its lower edge is sharpened with a wedge;
the rail is coated with PVA glue, driven in with a wooden mallet;
the upper plane is processed by a planer, then polished.

As a result, the boards are tightly pressed against each other, the point applied loads are distributed over a large surface, the lamellas stop “walking”, the sounds disappear.

Foaming and squirting

With a sufficiently strong foundation on which the logs are laid, experts recommend the following method on how to eliminate creaking in the boardwalk:

a through hole with a diameter of 5 - 6 mm is drilled in the board;
through it, the internal cavity near the defective area is filled between the lags with mounting foam;
after drying, the foam turns into a supporting pad, dramatically increasing the bearing area.

The technique is suitable for emergency cases, but does not have high reliability for a number of reasons:

when loads are applied, the foam shrinks under the board, the creak returns after a while;
filling closed cavities is fraught with bulging of the floor covering / subfloor outward, since it is necessary to leave at least 1/3 of the space for the secondary expansion of the foam when it hardens;

Important! Unlike home insulation, it is better to use household mounting foam in the floors. Its density is higher, and the thermal insulation characteristics in this case do not matter.

The injection method is more reliable when, instead of mounting foam, the cavity is filled with an adhesive composition that hardens in air (epoxy and polymer resins).

But this method is suitable for filling small cavities, since epoxy is quite expensive.

Plywood flooring, chipboard

Another, but with many limitations, way to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor inside a dwelling is sheet material flooring:

The main disadvantages of the technology are:

if the plywood joint falls on a creaking board, this will only aggravate the situation;
wood-based boards are expensive, increase the repair budget;
plywood and chipboard are not facing materials, so additional decoration is required.

Therefore, plywood flooring is rarely used to eliminate boardwalk creaking.

Dowel fastening

The grooved board is joined along the length in adjacent rows by locking joints. At edged board there is no sheet pile, so its geometry is more susceptible to changes with changes in humidity. Therefore, information is useful for the home master on how to make a dowel connection to correct the indicated defect:

in adjacent boards is made blind hole at 45 degrees;
cylindrical wood detail- the dowel is coated with glue and hammered into this hole;
the operation is repeated in the opposite direction, as in the lower diagram;
after the glue dries, the dowels are cut along the plane of the board.

Important! The quality of the joint depends on the immobility of the boards relative to each other at the time of drilling.

Replacement of boards and lag

With significant physical wear, it is necessary to replace all the lumber so that the logs and boards do not creak:

This is the most expensive option, you will need to take out all the furniture from the room and dismantle the trim.

Preventing squeaking when laying a wooden floor

It is possible to avoid the occurrence of unpleasant sounds from the friction of wood against wood or metal at the stage of installing the boardwalk. To do this, it is enough to lay absorbent material on top of the log and apply the adjustable floor technology.

Noise isolation on lags

The home master will not have to disassemble the boardwalk if the logs are cut off from the edged / tongue-and-groove board:

At the same time, the acoustics of the ceiling will be further improved, and protection against getting wet will be provided.

Adjustable floor technology

Without experience, it is very difficult to figure out why a tongue-and-groove flooring board or subfloor flooring turned out to be creaky. Therefore, manufacturers produce an adjustable floor system, in which the likelihood of third-party sounds is reduced:

logs are mounted on studs passed through the bar;
they are carved in a single horizontal level;
the protruding threaded part is cut off by the angle grinder.

Lumber absorbs less moisture, provides natural ventilation, there is no rigid fixation of wood to concrete. Even if boards that are incorrectly fixed to the joists begin to creak, it is much easier to repair defective areas, since you do not need to open the entire floor.

Thus, the characteristic creak of the boardwalk can be eliminated with your own hands by additionally screwing in self-tapping screws, foaming the internal space under it, wedging, or other indicated methods.

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Such an annoying floor defect as a creak is in any case unpleasant. Anything can be the cause of it: initially incorrect installation, poor-quality material, splitting of planks, loosening of nails, leakage, parquet drying out, uneven screed under the boards, which leads to skew at the joints. Something definitely needs to be done about this. Because not only is the creak unbearable to hear, it can also mean that the coating wears out quickly.

Anything with a wooden component will creak due to various problems. In the descending price category - this is parquet, flooring, parquet board, veneer board, laminate. How to ensure that the floor does not disappoint, will be discussed further.

Option 1. Cardinal

Complete replacement of a wooden floor to the base is an expensive and long option, but in general the most advantageous. The creak will go to long time, and walking on the floor will bring only pleasure - physical and aesthetic. Especially if it is a soft cork floor or self-leveling floor.

Option 2. Good old

If there is no desire to waste time and energy, you can do the most in a simple way- to buy a carpet. There are a great many of them on the market - large and small, thick and thin, expensive and cheap. With the effect of soundproofing, this flooring option will slightly weaken the nasty sound. Naturally, the creak will remain, but because of the carpet it will not be heard so much.

Option 3. Switching

You can simply move the boards by doing it yourself, or, much better, find craftsmen willing to take on the task. This is especially true if the floors are swollen during a leak, the boards are swollen and rub against each other. It is useless to dry them and wait until they return to normal. The floor should be dismantled, the boards should be dried and re-adjusted, after sharpening in some places. Or replace the ones that don't fit at all. The process is long but effective.

Option 4. Backfill

You can eliminate the creak without losing appearance boards and without serious repair work. If the boards rub against each other, then there are cracks and gaps. By pouring graphite powder with talc into them, it is possible to achieve a reduction in the level of creaking to a minimum. Another idea is to drive in wedges to close the gaps as well.

Option 5. Jellied

The space between the boards and joists can be filled with mounting foam so that the creak disappears as soon as it hardens and fixes all loose elements. But this option is very short - with a strong amplitude of oscillations, the foam is still deformed and destroyed.