Monday 1 July 2013

What approaches to fixing noisy, unlevel, bouncy floors?

The fixes one was cautious about were; adding additional screws or nails, adding another laying of boarding on top of the existing floor, builders specification of cross bracing, and doing nothing (waiting for the house to improve). Adding screws to a JJI Floor Joist System (I-Beam, semi engineered composite floor) adds upto 12% improvement in performance, such as deflection. However gluing the boards correctly adds upto a 70% improvement - it is mandatory to glue the floor boarding to the joists, but that does not mean it was done, or that it was done correctly. If the above doesn't raise concern for a builder that wants to add screws to a defective floor, then the sheer numbers of failed attempts (such as adding screws) concluded the opinion I had to look for something better, with a realistic chance of success. The way one went, after an intrusional inspection to check joist design, span, hangers, etc and catalogue all the faults, was a combination of solid blocking and joist plating. Based on experience walking floors with various fixes, and on much research from various sources, typical cross bracing (herring bone strutting) was not the way to go.