I'm no builder by the way, my upstairs floors are creaking, well it's more like the walls. Basically when you walk around a room the walls creak even when you're not walking near them, I've had some of the floorboards (chipboard) up in some of the rooms and I'm 100% confident that the chipboard flooring is moving up and down under the stud walls and is creaking on the shafts of the nails that are securing the soul plate to the floor. I can see some quite large gaps between the soul plate and the chipboard if I look under the skirting boards. This image shows the nails that the floor is creaking on (see red arrow): So what are my options here, some rooms have recently been really nicely decorated and carpeted so these are going to be tricky but most of the other rooms are more accessible. So for the rooms that I can work on more easily I was thinking either trying to drive some wooden wedges under the skirting and between the gaps OR try to get some king of expanding foam under there but I'd need a really small nozzle to get under the skirting I could as a last resort actually rip all the skirting boards off to make access a lot better for the above solutions OR I get a hacksaw blade under there and cut through the nails, no more nails = no more creaking? While I had some of the floorboards up I did actually manage to drive some spax floor screws up from under the floor and up into the soul plate from underneath. This made a MASSIVE difference to the creaking, it was SUPER loud before and it's now a lot quieter but still annoying non the less. Not that it really matters but I guess the reason there is such a gap between my floorboards and my stud walls is because the floor joists were damp when the house was built and they've shrank as they've dried over time?
wedges with aspot of glue on em . wedges best in pairs , make them wider than the wall. tap them in pairs from each side and then cut of bits not needed.
Darn nusiance when they use ordinary nail for a sole plate & not screw it, nailing only ok when they use ring shank nails, nothing moves.
Didn't think of that! Nice one. This is probably a silly question but can wedges be bought anywhere or am I making them?
The best option would be to bite the bullet and solve the structural problems by cutting the floor where the red lines are and placing a noggin under the wall. You can get some mini joist hangers to hold the noggin in place. http://www.screwfix.com/p/sabrefix-mini-jiffy-hanger-44-x-65mm-10-pack/48896 Then drive some 150mm or greater screws at an angle through the skirting into the noggin, fill and touch up the skirting. You may need to run a batten between the noggin to support the floorboard
Thanks guys! Due to being less destructive to the house I'll try wedges first then if that fails I'll have to pull all the floors up and add some support.
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