The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
First Aid For The Ailing Houses
When this does not work, gentle pounding on the ceiling below will show the direction in which the beams run, and measurements from a wall, repeated upstairs, will give the locations.
To take out a creak, a weight, such as a person, should be on the loose place to force the subfloor against the beam. Two-inch finishing nails, which have small heads, should be used, driven through the face of the floor at an angle. Care should be taken to prevent the hammer head from denting the floor. When the nail is three-fourths driven, a tool called a "nail set" should be used for the last quarter, to drive the head beneath the surface of the wood. The hole left above the nailhead can be filled with wood putty or plastic wood At least two nails should be used at each creaking place driven at different angles.
An even simpler method is to use a single cement-coated finishing nail instead of the two angled nails. A cementcoated nail has been dipped in a resinous material that melts from the friction of driving the nail into the wood. This resin then bonds the wood fibers to the nail's surface to prevent loosening.
When squeaking in a floor is due to the rubbing of one board against the next as weight is applied and then removed, it may sometimes be silenced by sifting talcum powder into the joint. Powdered graphite may also be used. This may be purchased in hardware stores in a convenient squeeze tube with a needlelike applicator tip. Pencil lead, finely powdered, may also be used. Make a funnel of paper and sift the lead through this into the cracks in the area that squeaks. This is only a temporary repair, however.
While a floor should properly be made in double thickness (a subfloor and a finish floor), in many low-priced houses there is only one thickness, the finish floor being nailed directly to the beams. When the under side of a floor is exposed, inspection of the exposed boards will show whether the floor is single or double thickness. If the boards arc of the same width as the floor boards of the room above and run at a right angle to the beams, the floor is single thickness. If the exposed boards are wider than the flooring upstairs and run at a different angle from them, the floor is double. When the under side of the floor is not open, a 1/4-inch hole can be bored through the floor in some out-of-the-way place, as in a closet, and the thickness measured with a piece of wire having a small hook bent in one end; a thickness of more than 1 inch indicates a double floor.
