How do you fix creaking floorboards?

neets

Our floorboards downstairs creak really badly. The floorboards are high quality engineered oak boards, thicker than the normal semi-solid apparently. They were laid on top of a fairly thick chipboard as instructed by the manufacturers. It's driving me round the bend. We spent a fortune and they creak like crazy. God help any burglars trying to sneak in. Can anyone shed any light?

ciaran67

neets wrote: »

Our floorboards downstairs creak really badly. The floorboards are high quality engineered oak boards, thicker than the normal semi-solid apparently. They were laid on top of a fairly thick chipboard as instructed by the manufacturers. It's driving me round the bend. We spent a fortune and they creak like crazy. God help any burglars trying to sneak in. Can anyone shed any light?

We've only got one creak... right outside our bedroom door leading into the other toilet :mad:

loyatemu

moved to DIY

Pablod

neets wrote: »

Our floorboards downstairs creak really badly. The floorboards are high quality engineered oak boards, thicker than the normal semi-solid apparently. They were laid on top of a fairly thick chipboard as instructed by the manufacturers. It's driving me round the bend. We spent a fortune and they creak like crazy. God help any burglars trying to sneak in. Can anyone shed any light?

Depends on the strucure of the house and if the Downstairs floorboards are different to the upstairs floorboards,
Generally on a timber frame house, upstairs, you would pull up the ould carpet and re-screw the boards down into the frame again...
But sometimes the creak can come back (even louder than before):eek:

Stoner

so these are not really the main floorboards, its an oak wooden floor laid on chipboard, is that correct? if so the problem could be the way the floor is laid, or the way the chipboard was was installed, I'm no expert but I'd say that it could be the chipboard, its terrible for doing that and it's not a great material to have in a house, many houses built in the 1970s have it, it was cheaper to install than actual floor boards, but its screwed down less and can end up being creaky.

I dont want to suggest to you to lift your false floor (assuming i have it right) I'm just pointing out that the issue could be in the chipboard, not the oak floor.

CJhaughey

I would hazard a guess and say that I think the problem is the Chipboard base.
It is likely that your engineered floor is t+g and in this case it is unlikely that the floorboards are causing the squeak(unlikely not impossible).
However unless the Chipboard also is t+g then the boards will be laid and butted together, this seem to be the source of lots of squeaking in the houses I have seen that have this finish.
You could try emptying the room and lifting the floor and then using a saw to cut along the joint line making the gap bigger and stopping the squeak that way.
Or screwing the area of chipboard that is making the noise.
Either way I suspect you will have to lift the floorboards.

My upstairs floor is Chipboard as well but the difference is to have a double t+g and then glue and screw the floor slabs down to the joists, this stops all noise from movement.

luckat

Have you contacted the manufacturer? Maybe send them an email, and offer to attach a video of the creaking floor to the next one (since many emails with attachments will be trashed without reading if you haven't warned the recipient).

They probably come across this all the time.