I moved in to a new – one year old – home last October and have a noisy floor problem that’s severe. Working with builder, who’s being very helpful, but now he seems to be out of ideas. Maybe some of you can give me your suggestions.
Here’s the situation: two-story house, 3100sq ft, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and bonus room upstairs. bonus room over garage, no problem. Walking into any other rooms or along hallway and hear loud cracking sound that seems to come from the base of the inside walls. Builder has put shims (like you use to hang doors) under wall plate, where it meets subfloor; has pulled carpet in master BR and added screws to floor joists). None of this works. He thought it might be drywall on ceiling of first floor, but no sign of nail popouts and he decided that wasn’t the problem. This is NOT caused by subfloor nails moving. Again, as we walk on the floor, the sound seems to come from the base of the walls, and, the sounds tend to go away when we’re walking around alot, and then return when we’re away for awhile and the floor “settles.”
I’m not a builder, but wonder if this might be caused by the wall plate (is that the right term? the 2×4 that lies on the subfloor) not being nailed correctly to the floor joists. I assume that all floors are going to move a little and in our case, the walls seems to be transmitting this cracking sound. Also, if we lean slightly against the walls, they crack a bit. We’re going nuts. Any ideas will be welcome, and thanks in adavance for your help.
Brian
Replies
I'm assuming there are no supporting walls below the offending second floor walls. The main floor is open concept?
If so I've run into this before. Second floor partitions framed over center span of large room below. Walking on second floor caused the floor to sag and the nails holding the wallplate to the foor squeaked.
I removed the baseboard and screwed the plate to the subfloor in several places. It worked for a while and then the nails holding the studs to the plate began to squeak. The wall was a bridge between the second floor ceiling joists and the second floor. When the floor sagged under load, something had to give.
I pulled back the carpet and lifted the subfloor exposing the joists. I added cross bracing to the joists to better distribute the load from one to several joists. After all that, there were still squeaks. Not so bad as they were, but there were squeaks.
Poor design.
Gord
I appreciate the reply and advice. You're right about the design. The walls (hallway and bedrooms) are above an open dining room/kitchen/family room below, so no first floor support. I'll talk to the builder again and offer your suggestion of cross bracing the joists. Our noises aren't nails squeaking...more like sharp cracking sounds, but it may still be due to the wallplate-to-subfloor/joist movement. I sure hope we can get to the bottom of this. Thanks again for your help.
Brian
could it be a heatduct? any sheetmetal nailed to floorjoists? Piping?
I think I was able to fix a sqeak like you're describing by going to the unfinished basement and running long screws through the sub floor and up into the plate of the interior wall.Have you tried that?^^^^^^
"The Older We Get, The Better We Were"
Thanks for your response. The idea Gordo had, to cross-brace the floor joists and nail wallplate to joists may solve this.
Thanks again for your help.
Brian