Leveling a T&G Floor

[mikey]

Hi,

A quick query - we are going to attempt to pull up and level our T&G floor - areas are 5.10 x 3.7 and 4 x 2.7- I notice that 2 of the beams/bearer? seem to be slightly warped resulting in a great sounding creak over one particular beam. Is it easy to replace these or can they just be packed with some form of spacer? The house (in melbourne was restumped about 10years ago).

In following up on my last message many months ago - we did not end up finding or using a clear coating over our internal red brick wall - advice suggested we just scrub/clean it up and save ourselves the problem of rising damp or a build up of moisture behind the coating.

Cheers
Mike

[seriph1]

gday - good to see you again ..... it might be wise to get some prof. advice on this one ..... I recall your house is 10 yrs old and has concrete stumps - unless something is seriously wrong, you shouldnt have to go to the trouble of removing floors to correct things .... is your house high enough for someone to get under it to check out what's what? If you do decide to lift the floor and weant to keep the boards, you will probably need a floor lifter, available from hire-places.....dont recall where your place is, but a LOT of Melbourne is on clay and no amount of bracing etc. will prevent the movement in the stumps.

cheers

[MarkV]

I would agree with seriph1 to lift the flooring would be an extremely serious move. You should be able to pack under the bearers and or joists with some Fibro and or wedges and with a couple of nails here and there (skewed of course ) knock the squeak right out of it. Just how uneven is the floor anyway?. It's been my experience that if you lift tongue and groove no matter how careful you are you will damage quite a few boards which can be hard to match if you have to replace them.:eek:

[TassieKiwi]

Don't lift the floorboards. I had great success killing squeaks by sqirting 'no more nails' under the offending area. Also, the pro's that did the floor poloshing used a polyurethane that was poured on and spread out over the sanded area with wide brushes. This found it's way down between the T&G and...... no more squeaks, and a beautiful floor.


Levelling is a different story - might pay to ask Journeyman.

Den

[mikey]

All,

Thank you for your words of advice. We have opted to get some advice from a builder on appropriate measures to take:

1. stopping the creak - unfortunately we have no access underneath without pulling up some boards, but renailing maight be an option.

2. levelling - just want to make sure that structure is sound - I'm not too worried that the floor is not perfect in this sense - as long at the motorised pulley system allows us to get up and down the slope (no - not that bad).

The floor in general needs sanding and polishing and there are a couple of areas that could be used to start the lifting, ie can disguise the impact. If I find the attachment tonight I will upload a better pic of the floor as a reference.

Cheers
Mike

[TassieKiwi]

Our '40's house had an almost unnoticable trapdoor in the bathroom - maybe you could make a 'feature' of a trapdoor in a corner somewhere, and simply cut a hole between the joists with a narrow kerf blade. Ours had been formed with either edge of the hole over the joists, ie cut across the 'ends' of the T&G. The short lengths of T&G then lifted out, as the first one had had the tounge cut off flush.

Hope that makes sense

Den