Everybody hates squeaky floorboards right. Especially when it involves waking sleeping babies.
Hey guys i'm James and in this video i'm going to show you how you can fix your squeaky floorboards,
through your carpet, without having to remove it first and in a safe way. So let's go ahead and get
started. I'm going to be using this kit here called squeak no more. I've used this kit a lot around
the house for all the squeaks and i can really say it works a treat. I'll leave a link in the
description box below so you can have a look for yourself. Now this kit has everything you're going
to need in it to fix the squeaks in your house, the only other thing you will need is a drill.
It comes with around 50 of these special screws. It's designed so it can be easily
snapped off right at this weak point here, so when you drive this down onto your floorboards, it will
pull the floorboards down to the joists, eliminating the squeak
and then you can just snap the head right off. So why do your floorboards squeak
the reason your floorboards squeak is because the floorboards are nailed down to the joists that run
the length of your flooring. Over time as the wood expands and contracts the nails can come loos.e
When the nails come loose the wood can move up and down the nail and that movement and friction between
the nail and the wood is what causes the squeaks. What we have to do is secure the floorboards
back down to the joists but firstly we need to find the joist and what direction it runs in.
This isn't always the case but typically the joists will run along the narrower span of the
house so this could give you a good idea of the direction of the joists. To find the position of
the joist though you can do this by simply using a hamme,r hitting the floor and listening to the
difference in sound. Now i hope you can hear this but here it sounds hollow and here it sounds solid
so i'm pretty sure that there's a joist around here. Although this is a good way
of finding the joist it's not going to tell you if there are any pipes or cables in the vicinity,
which is obviously good to know if before you're drilling into the floor. Before blindly drilling
into the floor although it's not absolutely necessary i would definitely recommend using
a joist finder, multi detector. These aren't great at finding the joist through carpet but what it is good
at, is it will tell you if there are any electrical cables or metal in the vicinity, like at the moment
it's telling me there's a cable right here so you should obviously avoid drilling in this area.
So we're pretty sure that there's a joist in this area around here from using the hammer method,
the detector is telling us that there isn't any electricity cables here so that's good but to pin
down the direction of the joist, if we run it along where we think the joist is, you can see
it's picking up metal, these are the nails that are holding the floorboards to the joist
and they will run along the full length of the joist. So now we can be certain of the direction
the joist is running in. In the kit you also get a special joist finding screw it has a little bit of
thread on one end and then a long smooth shaft. So when I drill this down in through the carpet,
through the floorboards, if it doesn't hit the joist underneath you'll be able to pull on this
and it'll just move freely over that smooth shaft. Okay so let's try drilling into where
we think the joist is and i marked it here with this screw. Okay so you see that is moving freely.
Let's pull that out. Okay so let's move over an inch and try again.
There you go i can't pull this out, so i've definitely hit the joist
and it's running along this direction. I'll leave the screw there to indicate the position of the
joist. Okay next we're going to be using this special tripod, the screw that i told you about
and also this screwdriver bit. The screwdriver bit has this little collar on which is literally just
a stopper. When used with the tripod it stops you driving the screw all the way in, leaving the screw
just at the right distance off the ground, so we can easily snap the screw head off. Okay so we need
to put the tripod in the center of the joist, right over where we identified where the joist was. The
screw goes in the hole and then we need to drive down the screw as far as the tripod will let us.
Now here is one thing that's really important. You need to stand as close as you can to the tripod,
over your joist, to put all your weight down on the floorboards.
What this does is push the floorboards down onto the joist, so that when you screw it down
it's in contact with the joist and the screw will hold it down flush. Then you just drive it in
and there you go it's driven the screw down
and it's just leaving it slightly proud of the floorboards. Okay so you've got your first screw
in but i'm going to put another one either side around four inches apart of this screw
you may need to put more screws in depending on how bad your squeak is.
Okay let's see if that sorted out the
squeak. Now that is not making any sound at all now, so we're ready to just snap the screw heads off.
Now if you do have more squeaks around your room you can use a measuring tape to measure typically
400 mil or 16 inches across from either side to find your next joist.
So once you've found your first joist it's pretty easy to find the rest
So once you've fixed your squeak we're ready to snap off the heads of these screws.
Now the tripod has this little gap in it which takes the screw and you literally just put it over
head of the screw, knock it to one side or the other and snap the screw heads right off.
Now you can put your full weight on this and you won't feel a thing as it snapped off flush
with the floorboards and you'd never notice that you just screwed through your carpet.
Now this can also be used for if you have squeaks on a hardwood floor, or a soft wood floor,
or even through vinyl flooring. It comes with its own special adapter for these types of situations
but it doesn't work particularly well if you have chipboard flooring. You can get the squeak no more
kit on amazon for around £30 or $27 in the US and it's absolutely worth it for the hassle it
saved with not having to remove the carpet first. Thank you all for watching and please give this
video a thumbs up as it will help my channel to grow. If you've got any questions about how to use
this kit just let me know in the comment section below if you want to see more diy videos, tutorial
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