How to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor: why the floors creak and how to get rid of "music"
The wooden floor has been used by man since time immemorial. Natural wood flooring has withstood the competition with new finishes that are constantly appearing on the market. Moreover, despite the development of innovative technologies that allow producing various finishing materials from almost everything, it is the wooden floor today that is a clear sign of prosperity and good taste. One cannot fail to single out another parameter: a wooden floor is very beautiful. However, sooner or later, the owner of the home raises the question of how to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor.
Why does the wood floor begin to creak?
In principle, the answer to this question is quite simple. Logically, the floor in the building is an integral part of the overall holistic design. Under any conditions, sooner or later, this design naturally shifts, which provokes the appearance of mechanical stress.
In addition, such factors are not reflected in the best way on a wooden floor:
- violation of operating rules;
- high humidity in the room;
- weakening of nail joints;
- lack of gaps near the walls;
- reduction in size (drying out) of boards or logs;
- age.
What to do to eliminate squeaking?
Fill with foam
As a rule, the underground space is 90 mm high. This means that you can try to give rigidity to the floor covering by filling unnecessary slots with foam. In theory, after expansion, it should reliably fix the deformed floorboards. In practice, it turns out that the effectiveness of this method is not very large - during operation, the foam can wrinkle and collapse. That is, the elimination of squeaking is achieved only for a certain period of time. It turns out that the money was actually spent in vain.
Knock out wedges
The problem of the “musicality” of the wooden floor can be solved by clogging wooden wedges between loosely fixed boards and beams, or between adjacent boards. Thus, the friction of the floorboards against each other or against the beams will be neutralized. If the boards are very susceptible to wear, then this method can be ineffective.
Attention! To carry out such repair measures, you should have at hand: a hammer, wooden wedges and a dumper.
Apply metal anchors
This type of hardware can be used to eliminate the creak of a wooden floor only when the coating is laid on top of a concrete slab. This approach is, in principle, very effective, but it is characterized by high cost. Of course, it all depends on the scale of the problem area, but in some cases about 150-200 anchors can be used for repairs. The minimum distance between adjacent anchors along the log should not exceed 1 m. This means that the cost of such repairs will be tangible.
Important! To perform the work you will need a powerful drill, and ideally - a hammer drill. With the help of such equipment, it will be easy to make a through hole through a floorboard, a lag into concrete. Then bend the dowel there, and secure the lag itself with an anchor.
Pull (sort out) the floor
In this case, we are talking about a very laborious method of dealing with defects. Although it should be noted its efficiency.In the process, the state of the lag is rechecked. Those that are deformed, corrected or even replaced. A complete audit of all boards is also performed.
Attention! When sorting the floor, it is necessary to replace all nails with self-tapping screws. The practice of exploitation of wooden floors shows that usually creaking appears in those places where wood and nail are connected. Self-tapping screws, such shortcomings are unusual.
Lay plywood
The creaking of wooden floors can be eliminated by laying sheet plywood on top of the base of the floor cake. It is important to consider that plywood should be no thinner than 12 mm, since it is unlikely that the thin material can be corrected. As for the effectiveness of this method, there is no 100% guarantee that the creak will not resume at all, however, for a long time you will be able to forget about this problem.
Stretch with screws
You can try to eliminate the trouble without resorting to disassembling the main coating. However, it is advisable to give preference to this particular method of combating the creak of a wooden floor only if unpleasant sounds arise as a result of the contact of the board and the log. That is, it is a "spot" repair.
Important! It is very important to find the lag correctly. As soon as this condition is met, 2-3 screws are screwed into the board. In the vast majority of cases, this eliminates the creaking of the floor.
In custody
Whatever method of fixing the floorboards you prefer, at the final stage it will be necessary to carefully examine the surface of the floor once again to identify cracks. They must be covered with mastic for wooden floors. Sand the repair site. Then open the repaired floor with drying oil, which will also allow you to forget about squeaks for a long time. Well, in conclusion, the problems of visual perception of gender are solved. If the floor consists only of boards, then a layer of varnish or paint is applied on top of them, and if the installation of another coating is relevant, then we lay it. Everything, so the wooden floor got another life span!
Leonid 
Ramz 
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Valery
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