in this video we're going to take care of these
squeaking floorboards as you can see you can actually tell by the camera movement
that the floorboards are rather loose in this earlier which is causing them to
creak so the first thing we need to do is actually lift the carpet up and then
we can take a look when we can fix the problem I have actually seen a video of
a screw which is approximately six inches long which somebody has actually
driven straight through the carpets and into the joist so they went along found
that where it was creaking and put the screw directly through the carpet
through the wood and into the joist you can't actually do that in the UK if you
do that in the UK you are asking for trouble beneath this carpet are pipes and
cables you get that in most UK properties and as you can see in this
example we've actually got the top of the stairs there was a mark across the
top where where the safety gate is and then as we come round it actually leads
off into two more bedrooms and then there's a two more bedrooms behind me so
it is quite a difficult carpet to lift so what we need to do is look for a
corner and we need to find out where we can lift up the carpets up from so this
is the top step what I'm going to do is I'm going to get all of the carpets
there you can actually see that it is a little bit loose and I can just get the
finger behind out you definitely kerf when you do this because you're the
carpet gripper it behind there which is very sharp now we've got that out we can
pull that back and I do have to warn you now to keep your fingers away from the
carpet gripper because it is very sharp and it will piece your skin
once we've got the carpet up we can then lift up the underlay you often find
that this is stapled down but in this instance it's actually been removed in
the past probably to do some plumbing or some electrical work now that we've got
the carpet up you can see what an actual mess this is we have a chipboard
floor which has been cut in places it is screwed down in several places but this
board that's doing the majority of the
creaking doesn't actually seem to be screwed down anywhere or anywhere where
I can see the screws what you'll find in a lot of cases is that people have nailed
down the boards and that is the wrong thing to do because it will always work
loose also people screw them down and they use the incorrect screws they can
work loose over time and then they cause creaking again one thing you
should never do is go around and put screws in randomly because you do not
know what is under the floor there could actually be pipes are cables very close
to the surface if you put a screw in there there's a chance that it could
pierce the pipe or go into an electrical cable so you'd have to be very careful
screw the boards down we're going to use these floor tite flooring screws these
are specifically developed for this job and they do have a twin thread and the
single thread in the same screw that means that they are incredibly difficult
to pull out so once these are in they should hold the boards down with no
problems at all if your existing floor boards are squeaking and you've already
got screws in it is a good idea to remove some of them and put some of
these in because these will prevent the floorboards from squeaking. take that out obviously
you can see that that is not suitable for holding down a floor board and then
will simply replace that with the correct type of screw you can do this
with nails as well if you remove the nail obviously there's nothing that the
screw or nail can hit so you can do a direct replacement what you should never
do is try to go at the side of it because there's a possibility that
there's a cable or a pipe running underneath so I'm going to
screw that back down and obviously when you choose these screws you don't want
really long ones because it could be cables running through the joists etc so
I'm just going to screw that in there
and that will guarantee that the floor does not squeak in some properties
you will have traditional pine tongue-and-groove floorboards it's quite
common to find these nailed down and that can cause them to creak a simple
way to fix that problem is to remove the nails and replace them with some decent
screws so if you take a look at this long board you can see that there's
virtually no screws that's all in it in fact I can only find one screw right at
the top end so I'm gonna remove that screw we're going to see if we can lift
this board up and we'll take a look underneath so I'm now going to try and
lever this board up from this end to get this board up and take a look underneath
it and then we'll see why it's not actually screwed down so you can see
there why the floor has been lifted in the first place it was obviously to put
the pipes in perhaps the cables so the good news is that we've got plenty of
places where we can put some good quality screws in there and that will
stop the boards from creaking when you get to this part of the floor you can
see that somebody's wrote more and put two lines on and that is actually indicating
where those pipes are so I want to go to the other end and I'm gonna draw two
lines on there and when we put the board back we know exactly where the pipes are
and then on this piece of chip board I'm actually going to put a mark
showing were the joist are and then we actually know where we can put the
screws when we come to replace the floor before I put the large board back
I'm actually going to put a few screws into this piece and that adjoining piece
there the problem is a that is very close to the end of the joist there
for that reason I'm going to drill a pilot hole and we're going to drill it
on a angle so that it goes into that joist but also pre-drill this one as a
precaution so to drill this I'm going to start off with the drill straight up and
once I've started drilling the hole I want to turn it like I so and then I'll drive into that joist on
an angle can then simply take a screw and I can drive that straight in there
on an angle and we're guaranteed not to break the chipboard and obviously you do
need to ensure that screws are flush with the surface and again and sure that
it's flush with the surface so can now replace this large board simply going to
slide that into position so it's now safe to stand on the board we can now take
a straight edge and we can draw a line in down there
and then anyone in future will know there are pipes beneath there so I'm
just going to put a dot where the joist is in three places and then I'm going
to change them to crosses then we know exactly where to put the screws now
we have done that we need to do is take the floor tite screws and drive those in
exactly where the crosses are there are some people that said that you can put
talcum powder between the joints that might work temporarily but eventually it
is going to stop working so this is by far the best permanent solution so now that
we've done that you can guarantee that the floor will not squeak again now what
we have to do is put the flooring back so I'm going to start off with the under
lay and you just need to ensure that it goes back in the exact right position it
doesn't want to be over the carpet gripper like that it needs to be in between
the carpet grippers if you want to you can actually staple that back down
although it's a bit pointless because it's not really going to go anywhere
once you've done that you can then put the carpet back when you do this need to
ensure that you don't get any creases or bubbles in the carpet so we can do that
by starting a central point like that and then we can ensure that it is down
and you can just kick that across with your feet when you come to a threshold
if you push the carpet like so and then get something that's blunt a
lot of people like to use a bolster chisel for this but you can use anything
that's got a wide flat edge on it you can simply push the carpet back
underneath
once you've done that you can then stand on it and that should then be gripped
back in position so we'll then need to ensure that the carpet is pushed back
exactly as it was then we just need to ensure that the top step is put back as
it was so ensuring that it's on the grippers at
the sides there and I'm gonna take something that's not gonna damage the
carpet and I'm gonna push that in you do have to be aware that the carpet
grippers are very sharp and when you're doing this don't want to be pressing where the carpet
gripper is because it will damage your fingers again once you push that in
if you just stand on it that should ensure that it never comes out again
then all we need to do is go around the perimeter just ensuring that it is on the carpet grippers
so now the floorboards are back you can see that it is absolutely
no squeak there whatsoever that is as quiet as anything I hope you've
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