Thread: Squeak Squeak but not a mouse to be seen.

Originally Posted by scareybear

I have a two storey home and with timber joists(?) and particle board as the floor with carpet. The floor is uneven to the point that you could roll a ball in too many places and also squeaks. Is there anything i can do or do i need to replace all the timber.

I have the same type of house. My upper floors squeaked badly too.
The difficulty of fixing the squeaks depends on whether they're coming
from the edges of particle rubbing against each other, or from the
joists/bearers themselves. In my case, it was a combination of both.

I ripped up the old carpet, and put a whole lot of deep screws down through
the particle board joins where they were rubbing. That got rid of the worst
squeaks. There's still some from the joists, but I tolerate them. So that's
my first suggestion: try some screws along the lines where separate pieces
of particle board meet each other, and see if that helps.

Regarding unevenness, I had the carpet replaced with timber laminate.
The contractors spread a special mortar-like compound (whose name I forget)
on top of the particle board to level up the floors. The result is not perfect,
but quite good enough compared to the alternative of taking up the particle
board entirely and trying to de-squeak and re-level the joists.

HTH.

Is this a relatively new floor you are talking about?

Tools

no the house is about 30 years old, it has a metal rod running from one side to the other to support the main joist, that is the most squeaky area.

Here's an excellent fix which should have all the squeaks gone.
If you can locate the position of the joists beneath your floor using the nails as a guide, mark with a pencil directly over squeak (and joist naturally).
Use a spade bit, maybe 12-15mm and drill out the particle board to reveal the joist. If you are directly over the squeak, you will see a gap of sorts.drill a pilot hole (either side of the hole for a decent length screw.
squeeze liquid nails into gap, via the hole you made. then screw in screws so that they slip through the particle board and pull it to the joist.
This will solve your sqeaks. Buy a small peice of scrap particle board and using a hole saw blade, cut replacement plugs to fill the holes you made. Glue 'em in and sand flat if necessary.
Good luck.

Not going to help you much but you'll find they didn't liquid nail the sheets to save a few bucks... And if its around the edges of the rooms then there rubbing on the walls if its a double brick joint...Not glueing the sheets lets them move slightly over the joists when the rooms load gets moved around (you walk through ) causing the squeak

cheers ute mad