Hey,
We just moved back into our remodeled home in which I installed about 700 sq. ft. of 3/4″ x 3 1/4″ fir flooring. Half of that was installed over new OSB subfloor in an addition and half was installed over glued and nailed 1/2″ OSB over existing subfloor. I fastened the planks with a pneumatic flooring stapler at about 12″ oc. The finish is O/S Hardwax, a vegetable oil and wax-based finish. Floor looks great, we have no shrinkage so far (the flooring was acclimated for almost two months) but it squeaks worse than some 75 year old floors. The only explanation that I have is that the milling was bad and the tounge doesn’t fit tightly enough in the groove.
So… The obvious solution, in my mind, is to crawl under the house, pull down the insulation and drive about 2000 screws up through the subfloor or, start face nailing and live with hundreds of filled nail holes. Anyone have any better ideas? Needless to say we are very dissapointed.
Replies
It's probably not the milling, my friend. We need some more info, though.
Did the subfloor squeak before you put down the floor? If the joists were a bit on the light side, they could be deflecting enough to allow movement. Optimally you need 3/4" subfloor glued down and either scewed or shot down with ring-shanks. Also if the floor is a bit uneven you'll get squeaks in between the high points.
Did you lay down any kind of underlayment? Rosin paper (some folks like 15# felt) eliminates some of the friction between the flooring and subfloor.
Hopefully it's a framing/subfloor issue because if it's not you have to either tear it out and reinstall it or just get used to it.
DCS Inc.
"Whaddya mean I hurt your feelings, I didn't know you had any feelings." Dave Mustaine
I have the same questions that earl asked, Those two items are responsible for a great majority of flooring squeaks. Tjhe main reason for placing a sheet of rosin paper or tarpaper is to prevent squeaks but you have not mentioned that you did or did not do this.
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It's a tough problem to fix, sorry. I don't like the sound of OSB in this equation - too many places it won't hold a nail good, etc.
Sometimes it CAN be even a loose bridging or even a pipe rubbing a joist - I have seen those cause squeeks.
Did you install the floor parallel, or perpendicular with the floor joists?
--------------------------
It's only satisfying if you eat it.
Can I ask when (what month) the floor was installed and finished? And when did you notice the squeeking? And where are you located (what climate)?
TIPI,TIPI,TIPI!
Did you install it under a full moon or a new moon?
Thanks for the questions, I'll answer what I can:
-I suspect this was a milling issue because I've looked at leftover pieces and the tounge is clearly loose in the groove and I can see the groove side moving against the tounge(nailed) side in the installed floor.
-I knew someone would raise the concern about using OSB subfloor. The subfloor was glued and nailed with ringshank nails.
-Rosin paper was layed under the flooring.
-I have ruled out squeaky bridging or framing because the floor squeaks everywhere.
-The flooring was installed perpendicular to the joists.
-The flooring was stacked and stickered with electric heaters directed at it from about mid October to when it was installed near the end of November. We moved in end of December and the squeks became apparent immediately.
-Don't know what the moon was doing during this time, it was likely hidden behind our Northwest clouds.
I am quite confident of my install (I do wish I had used plywood subfloor) and also confident that the issue is, in fact, that the milling was bad. Thanks for any tips on how to deal with this issue short of just getting used to it. Dylan
If in fact, it is caused by the milling, especially at the top of grov side movement as you describe, then neither screwing up from below nor face nailing is likely to give you any benefit. I've got to go back and see what sort of finish you said you used. I'm thnking that a talcum powder worked into the seams could help, but that depends on the finish
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Did you nail the floor into the floor joists? I would be suspect of OSB, or plywood, holding a nail well enough.--------------------------
It's only satisfying if you eat it.
OK, I'm thinking that a "vegetable oil and wax-based finish." with which I am not familiar, would provide enough wax to lube the edges that would be in rubbing contact where you suspect the squeak to come fromI noticed another potential clue in re-reading the first post.
I have heard/read that PC has deeloped a new style barbed flooring nail specifically because the newer OSB subflooring materials does not hold fasteners as well as plywood or planking did. I can't say how true that is, I always have used pwer nails with good result.
You used staples which I do happen to believe is more likely to lack good holding power and could have some squeaks coming from that metal to wood point of contace rather than the wood/wood contact which accounts for most squeaks.Another clue is your report that you can see movement at the edge joints with deflection under load. That makes me wonder if you see only one of the two move, or if the entio5re pair moves. If your staples were overdriven then the pair would be moving together and the squeak is coming from the metal/wood POC where the overdriven staple has split the wood of the tongue. I suppose that an under driven staple could also account for this too.
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If it's as bad as you indicate then perhaps you can get some compensation from the outfit that provided it to you or the company that milled it.
Living with it will get old in short order.
After becoming familiar with using fir (super dried salvaged) in trim work, I have found out that it has a great propensity for movement due to humidity changes. I would check the moisture content with a hydrometer and make sure that it was low before using it for flooring. Good Luck!
Thanks for the points to ponder,
-I haven't checked the moisture content but, as I said, I have seen far less shrinkage than I would have expected. 95% of my woodworking exp is with fir, salvage, kd, green and I have been pleased that there hasn't been any appreciable movement.
-I would have preferred to use nails rather than staples but I was able to borrow a flooring stapler so went with staples.
-The movement that I see is distinctly the groove side moving against the tounge side. The tounge edge is staying put.
-There will be no compensation forthcoming from seller, trust me.
Dylan
Moon joke aside, do you have some scraps left over where you might be able to gauge the milling tolerances of the tongue and groove. If you suspect that is the culprit, than maybe a solution can be focused there.
Well...have you considered facenailing into the joists? Maybe with square headed nails? I'd at least consider it. Man, that's a lot of nails, though.TIPI,TIPI,TIPI!
A properly installed floor shouldn't squeak that much.
Unless you knew the conditions prior to installation you have nothing to compare present conditions to. ie R.H., subfloor mcu%, flooring mcu %.
The flooring may have acclimated for 2 mos., but did it acclimate under "normal living conditions"? If the house was unconditioned...or wide open...then the "normal living conditions" rule of acclimation was violated.
If the milling was poor, you should have picked that up after the first few rows.
It's very possible that the tongues were broken during installation. A 12" fastening schedule is tight. For 3-1/4" fir 16" is sufficient. Pnuematic nailers and staplers are notorious for breaking tongues when the pressure is too high.
Ditch
Assuming your milling was bad and everything else is good and there is no warranty that's going to help anything, and you have extra time on your hands, I'd try something a little unorthodox.
Squeaks, even if seemingly from all over, are mostly from a small number of locations. I'd use blue masking tape and a thick around the middle buddy to find the exact locations that are squeaking. At a farm/ranch supply house they sell hypodermic needles and syringes in sizes that work well to inject glue. I'd drill 1/32" holes at the locations of the squeaks and inject some polyurethane glue, much like tightening a furniture joint without taking it apart.
Be sure and let us know what you try and how it works.
Cheers,
Don
The idea of injecting glue into the areas that I'm seeing movement at had occured to me. I have noticed that the areas adjacent to butt joints are staying put, no squeak, no movement. I believe that this is because I glued and biscuit-jointed all butt joints (in the absence of end-matching). The glue apparently squeezed out and basically glued the tounge into the groove. Maybe the solution is a combination of the glue trick and some judicious face nailing. This is great! If I ever run out of projects ;) I can shoot up my floor with Gorilla glue.
You probably don't want to use Gorilla glue (or any other polyurethane) because you'll need some moisture at the gluing surface.
If it was me, and the groove is too wide and moving up and down, I would do as Blodgett suggested and face nail the groove side. I don't think you need square nails, though. 8d casements nailed and set well will probably do the trick, especially if you can catch the joists. One of the nice things about Doug Fir is that it's a lot easier to find a color blended filler for nail holes than with some other wood species.
And I doubt staples are the issue. I nail floors with powernails, but that's because I have a floor nailer and not a stapler. OSB provides less withdrawal resistance than plywood, but I would think staples would probably perform better in OSB than nails, due to the diverging tips when driven.
The face nailing should go pretty fast, but if you want to get laborious, albeit effective, you can cinch the groove side down with trim screws....but then you'll have to counter bore for the head, keep track of a #1 sq. head driver bit and fill a slightly larger hole than a nail would leave.
On the lighter side::
When I was growing up my father took on a weekend project to fix the squeaky hard wood floor. My mother quickly stop him in his tracks and said "Do not fix the floor, I will not be able to tell when the kids get home at night" The floor still squeaks to this day!!!
LOL!
My four brothers and I slept in the second floor bedroom of our 1832 farmhouse. There were squeeks in the steps you wouldn't believe. as the years went by, I learned to recognize the sounds and would always know which of my brothers was ascending by the differeing squeek pattern.After I had been gone for a few years, I went back hoime for a visit. I was laying in my old bunk and heard a brother coming up and was suprised to learn that I knew immediately again after those years away knew which bro it was before he got halfway up.
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Well, my daughter is only two years old so by the time the squeaky floor has any practical use I will surely have torn out my last remaining hairs. I think that I will try face nailing and filling. Hope we get some relief! D