Read on to find out what you should be doing when your floors are creaking. Laminate Floor Creaking Causes. Uneven Subfloor. If your laminate floors are creaking, the most obvious culprit is an uneven subfloor. If your flooring is a relatively recent installation, consider whether the previous flooring in the room had a little squeak as well.
A good flooring professional will be able to assses your subfloor and even it out, if this is an issue. A high quality laminate should be able to be lifted and then refitted relatively intact, but if your laminate quality is inferior, the locking mechanisms will probably crumble apart when you lift it.
Dodgy Installation. Most manufacturers recommend that you leave a 10mm expansion gap, and a laminate floor should be left to acclimatise in the room its going to be laid in for at least 48 hours before installation begins.
This will cause the floor to shift when you apply pressure to it, making that tell tale creak or squeak noise appear. Excessive moisture or a particularly humid room can cause this problem even when expansion space is left.
Laminate flooring is designed and coated to be water resistant, but excessive moisture from humidity, spillages, or leaks will cause issues.
Make room for expansion! A sharp chisel and hammer or a multi tool can be used to sand and chip away some of the boards to leave some breathing room. Excessive Moisture. An overly humid room, or a laminate floor exposed to leaks or a great deal of water can swell, creak, and buckle. The solution is the same as above.
If your floors are creaking, make room for expansion. Solid Wood Creaking Causes. Posted August 25, 0. Posted August 24, 0. Listen to the Show. Follow Us Follows. Latest Popular Comments. October 14, 0. September 24, 0. September 16, 0. September 10, 0. August 31, 0. August 15, But over the last several years, as glueless floating floors have flooded the market, some manufacturers have rushed to keep up with others to secure their market share.
As a consequence, I have found that some glueless floors will make noise no matter what you do. Some of these floors are easy to install and perform well, while others can be a nightmare. When I say "nightmare," what I mean is that it's all about customer expectations. I have personally installed thousands of square feet of these new products manufactured by almost every company in the business. If a customer is told at the point of sale that these floors tend to be a little noisier than glued floors, there is usually no problem.
If they're not informed of that fact, the floor may not meet their expectations. From my experience, in general, the wider the plank, the quieter the floor. I have found that a 3-inch wide board made by Manufacturer X sounded like walking on Rice Krispies, while the same floor from the same manufacturer in 5-inch was fairly quiet. What is causing the noise in some of these products is the fact that although the manufacturing tolerances of these products lock the boards together, there is some movement between boards, so they can squeak and make noise when walked upon.
A couple years back I did an experiment on a job where I was installing 2, square feet of 3-inch-wide Product X. After installing the first room approximately square feet , every step was creaking and popping. The floor was properly acclimated and the floor was flattened and prepped to meet the manufacturer's requirements.
I pulled the floor completely up and re-flattened the subfloor so that it was completely flat, exceeding the manufacturer's requirements. I took photos and video of the subfloor prep and perfect flatness just to protect myself and then reinstalled the floor. Guess what? The floor sounded exactly the same-no change whatsoever. Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these floors. They can be a great value for the money, and easier to install.
They can just tend to be noisier than a glued or nailed-down hardwood floor. So, what can you do? This did not affect the warranty, as this particular floor could be floated or glued down directly to the slab.
Once glued down, the floor had no movement and made no noise at all. It cost the customer the extra expense of adhesive and a little more in labor costs, but in the end he was happy with the installation and the floor looked great.
If you are looking at an installed floor with this problem, there are two things you can try to help minimize the noise:. Then gently tap the floor with a rubber mallet so as to not damage the wood.
This will create vibrations, and the powder will migrate down between the boards. The powder will act as a lubricant and may solve the problem. Note that you should check with the manufacturer to make sure they approve this fix. This will generally solve the problem, but it may affect the warranty, so check on this first. I would call the technical services department of the manufacturer and see if this can be done; ask them to send you an email verifying you can do this.
If you don't get it in writing, you're leaving yourself open to a costly replacement. Something else I've noticed the last few years regarding floating floors is that sometimes they move due to foot traffic. Something else I've noticed the last few years regarding floating floors is that sometimes they move due to foot traffic, exposing the expansion gaps. I have seen this most often at the pivot point of a hallway. For example, if the floor is installed in a hallway crossways like the ties of a railroad track , each board is at most 3 to 4 feet wide.
When the floor was first installed with a proper expansion gap on both sides of the hall and the gap was covered with baseboard or shoe moldings, it all looked great. Compressed felt underlay is more expensive and generally doesn't cause these issues. How do you know if you have cheap underlay? Cut it with a utility knife and see if it cuts cleanly and without snagging. Stop Creak can help with these floors in some cases however, adding more underlay is quite easy for some flooring, particularly engineered and laminate.
Simply remove the flooring and add more underlay by tapping it together. Once the underlay is in situ, you can place the flooring back on top. Rather than sell my info, I would rather give it away through this blog in the hope that some of it will prove useful to anyone trying to fix squeaky floors. Just added to your cart.
Continue shopping. Close search. During the humid weather we see a dramatic increase in customers who are experience floor squeak From experience, there is nothing worse than spending thousands on a new floor only to have your house sound like a haunted house months later.
So what do you do if your modern floor squeaks and you are desperate for some squeak relief? Solution You need to lubricate the loose interlocking sections of floor to fix the squeak. Solution When machinery squeaks you give it oil so it has never made sense to me when people recommend using the screws or glue to stop creaks in click system floors.
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