Ugh, I hate squeaky floors and you probably do too.
I'm going to show you a really simple way to fix this that you can do right from
your floor joists are running. Now, in my case, as I move along like this,
you can see that that squeak follows this path kind of a front to back path.
In my case now, as it happens down here in my basement,
this is the utility closet and happens to be the one area that I can see which
directions the joists run.
And the real problem that we're seeing here is as we look at some of these
screws and things here, the nails, sorry, they've just completely missed.
And that's causing a lot of that squeaking that we were talking about before.
Now, this is not a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking,
your air registers are going to be in between two joists. So in this case,
the joists are running right here and right here.
Once you've identified that,
I'm going to use this kit here called squeak no more.
I've been using this one for years for different squeaks throughout the house.
And I can vouch for this. It works really well.
Now this kit has everything that you need to fix the squeaky floor with the
exception of one item, and that is a drill. One kit, one drill,
and you're ready to go. Now, these screws are special screws. As you can see,
there's a little weak point right here above the threads.
And that's where these things will actually snap right off,
which is part of the genius of this system that will actually drive down into
your carpet and into your floor, hold the floor together the way we want it to.
And then you snap the head right off. Now, in my case,
I've noticed that when I push right about here,
it sounds like the squeaking is coming from over here. So I'm going to run.
I'm not exactly sure where the studs are.
So I'm going to run a few tests here with my stud finder. I'm sorry,
my joist finder screw here and see if I can locate the stud that I think is
in this area here,
I'm going to try one here.
And the key is when you put it in a couple of inches and if you put it in
reverse and it spins freely,
that means it hasn't grabbed onto anything past the sub floor.
So I'm going to just take this one back out.
Okay.
I'm going to leave a screw right there to indicate that that's at the spot.
We've checked already move over about an inch.
Okay. And when I put it in reverse that time, it reverses back out.
So that might mean that we have something just to test
and to move over just a little bit.
Yeah, I can't get that one to spin freely.
So we've got a joist lining up right about here. Okay.
So I'll move the screw over here to indicate that that's where our joist is now.
Next up, we're going to use the tripod here and this bit.
So essentially we're going to put the tripod right over the center.
We'll put the screw right into that hole,
right where we identified that the joist was now with this bit,
it has this collet or this bushing right on the end. And that's just a stopper.
Basically. It's going to stop the screw from going too far in.
It's going to get it to just the right height, where we can snap off the head.
Now here's one thing that's really important here.
You want to put your weight down on the board.
You want to put your weight down on that section of the floor and what you're
doing there is pushing the floorboard,
the sub floor onto the joist so that when you screw it down,
it's already in contact with it and it holds it in place.
And then you just drive it all the way in.
Okay. So that went all the way in and that thing's in there nice and good.
Now I'm going to leave that one there.
I would like that as a visual indicator so that I can see where I'm at.
I'm going to put a couple more,
probably about five inches on either side and I might need more than that,
depending on how severe the squeak is.
All right. So I've got those few there. Ah, do you hear that? Me either!
There's nothing! That got the squeak. Now,
if you do have more,
another reason you can leave these exposed for the moment is you can use a
measuring tape to measure out typically 16 inches to one side or the other to
find a stud. So if you've got a measuring tape,
I'll bet if we go over 16, right here,
there will likely be another joist right there.
Yep. There we go. There's another. So once you find one joist,
it's usually pretty easy to find the rest of them and just take care of those
squeaks for good.
Now with these three screws in place and that squeak taken care of,
we need to get rid of these screws.
Now what this little tool has is this little stopper here,
this little gap that you can put in and you can just knock it to one side or the
other,
and then it breaks off the screw head at that weak point that we discussed
earlier. And the cool thing is there is no indication of that.
You can step on that. You can put your hands on that,
put all your weight on that.
You won't feel a thing it's grabbing onto the sub floor,
not to the padding or the carpet. Just break them off.
Now, if you've got a squeak in a hardwood floor, a softwood floor, laminate,
or linoleum, then you can still use this kit.
It actually comes with a separate template here.
This piece here that comes with the kit is for hard flooring for non carpeted
areas. So you use the taller one for softwood, the shorter one for hardwood.
And then it's got the little break-off area here,
just like we did with the carpet. Just a word of note on that.
You probably don't want to drill a bunch of holes like this, but with hardwood,
you simply drive the screw into here and then it will actually snap itself
off at the right height.
And then you'll just end up with this piece here that you can toss.
With the softwood,
you're going to drive it in and it will go until the bushing stops it like this.
And then again, it'll be sticking up just like the ones on our carpet were,
and then you just use that breaker here to break it off and get rid of that
head. So it's the same principle now with doing any of those,
you are going to end up with a small hole,
and it's only about a 16th to an eighth of an inch deep in your hardwood or
laminate flooring. And with that,
all you have to do to take care of that is use a wax crayon that's meant for
taking care of those things and just kind of smoothing those over or patching
those holes. If you look down in the description,
I have links to both those wax crayons that you can use for hard flooring,
as well as the squeak, no more kit.
This cost about $25 in the U S and in my opinion, it's well worth it.