Elimination of the squeak of the parquet floor, the cause of the defect and the technology for its correction. Parquet creaking is an annoying sound that accompanies the friction of the weakened elements of the wooden floor with each other. Everyone probably faced such a problem either at home or in a public place. It can accompany the operation of the coating, irritating residents for many years, if not drastic measures are taken. Our today's material is about how to eliminate the creak of parquet without resorting to the help of specialists.
The main reasons for the squeaky parquet floor
It should be said right away that usually only old parquet creaks. Due to the fact that natural wood is used in its manufacture, the creak of the coating can be considered a kind of retribution for the ecological cleanliness of the floor. Indeed, the natural material does not contain absolutely any chemical substances that could prevent the shrinkage of the parquet elements over time.
Before eliminating the squeak of such a floor, it is advisable to find out the cause of the extraneous sound. Its sources can be parquet planks, underlayment adjacent to the base, or wood logs. Let's consider what has to happen to all this for the parquet to start playing music:
Parquet creak can appear when wooden blocks peel off from the base, which can be a concrete screed, plywood sheets or bitumen mastic. For the characteristic sound of the floor, the friction of the freed dies with each other is sufficient even with their minimal movement. The reason for delamination can be uneven evaporation of moisture from the wood of the parquet with the formation of cavities between the flooring and the subfloor. It is in such places that the floor strips begin to shift. Over time, dust and debris accumulates under them, which complicates the problem.
Among other reasons for the squeak of a parquet floor, the following can be distinguished: cracking of wooden dies, their drying out, breakage of the ridge or groove of a separate board or several, loose nests of screws or nails of fasteners, the absence of a deformation gap between the walls and the parquet flooring, movement of the lags or ends of the boards relative to each other. to friend. All these defects in the floor cause friction between the dies, on the base, on loose fasteners, provoking the appearance of the creak of the old parquet.
Such defects are caused by errors in the floor device, which can be conditionally divided into technological and operational categories.
The first include violations of the rules for installation and drying of wood parquet boards:
- Uneven subfloor;
- Loose adhesion of a plywood or fiberboard backing to it;
- Incorrect location, insufficient fasteners, dimensional violation and deformation of wooden logs;
- Improper fastening of floor strips and skirting boards, lack of temperature gaps;
- Lack of vapor barrier protection of the floor, which leads to wetting of the parquet from the bottom;
- The moisture content of the original wood floor does not correspond to the accepted standards.
Errors in the operation of parquet include unacceptable loads on it in the form of mechanical and chemical influences, as well as violation of the temperature and humidity regime.
Preparatory work before repairing parquet
An impressive list of reasons for the squeak of a parquet floor prompts you to know its design, installation method and the fasteners used. In this case, it will be easier to choose a way to eliminate the squeak of the parquet with your own hands, while saving a lot of time.
It is not difficult to identify a creaky area of the floor. To do this, it is enough to walk around the room and, if there are extraneous sounds under your feet, stop in time and mark suspicious areas of the parquet with chalk. After completing the "walk", you need to carefully examine the marked places on the floor, determining the defects visible to the eye. If they are not identified, the problem may be hidden under the flooring. In this case, its partial or complete replacement will be required.
After determining the causes of the squeak, you can begin to eliminate them by repairing the parquet floor. To work, you need to stock up on the following tools and aids: an electric drill, drills with a diameter of 2 mm, a medical syringe, polyurethane glue, dowels, rags and masking tape.
Parquet repair technology when it creaks
The cardinal measure to get rid of the squeak of the parquet is to completely replace the floor covering. It is associated with the removal of all parquet blocks, proper preparation of the base, followed by the laying of the dismantled floor elements, scraping of the finished coating, its grinding and varnishing in several layers. This procedure is usually used when revealing large areas of delaminated parquet, and its implementation entails significant time and financial costs. But with a local squeak of the floor, you can use narrowly targeted ways to eliminate it. Let's take a look at them.
Elimination of potholes and cracks in the parquet
When the parquet, when walking, emits not just a creak, but also a loud crack, this is a sign of low humidity or high temperature in the room, since the floor slabs laid on the floor wet under such conditions dry out and become covered with cracks. Small cracks can be putty to match the parquet, and potholes can be repaired with a mixture of wood, choosing the appropriate color. Instead of putty, you can use a casein adhesive that includes sawdust. After processing problem areas, they must be carefully sanded, and then varnished on wood.
It is useless to seal wide cracks, they will not hold the binder solution. In this case, the damaged parquet strip will have to be replaced. To perform this work, you need to choose a plank that matches the size, color and type of wood to the rest of the parquet planks.
In this case, its restoration is performed in the following order. The dried die must be split into pieces with a hammer and chisel, and then removed from the floor in parts, starting from the middle along with the glue base. The resulting cavity should be carefully cleaned and its base should be carefully leveled.
Then, from the new board, you need to cut off the ridge, and grind the place of the cut with a plane. If necessary, grooves and ridges can be cut off from adjacent floor strips. When replacing several planks located next to each other at once, they must first be fastened together into a single rivet. Before doing this, it is recommended to make sure that it fits perfectly into the location of a number of old damaged dies.
Then, on the cleaned and leveled base of the floor recess, left after removing the damaged dies, bitumen mastic heated to 160 degrees or a suitable glue should be poured. A riveting should be placed on the treated surface, and then carefully remove the excess adhesive squeezed out by it.
On the renewed section of the parquet floor, you need to put some kind of load for a while. When the mastic or glue under the rivet is dry, it should be sanded with fine-grained emery paper, removed from wood dust and painted with varnish.
Parquet floor base repair
It is performed when an absolutely flat floor creaks. Two options are possible here. One of them provides for the creation of an intermediate laying of a parquet floor from plywood sheets with a thickness of 12 mm. This will allow you to get rid of the squeak for a long time, but to guarantee that it will never resume, while this option of repairing the parquet is impossible. Repairing the base according to another option is much easier, but in this case you need to know what the parquet was attached to. If it was laid on bituminous mastic, then the elimination of the squeak of the parquet can be done as follows. Prepare a construction hair dryer and use it to warm up the parquet strips to such a state that the bituminous mastic melts under them. The main thing in this method is not to overdo it, so as not to damage the front of the parquet. After the mastic is ready, the dies above it must be pressed with some kind of weight until the adhesive cools.
Installing wedges between parquet planks
If the floor slabs are poorly fixed to the joists or beams, then as a result of walking on such a covering, friction of its elements against each other occurs, accompanied by a creak. To prevent such friction, wedges are driven between the beams and the parquet boards. If there is no access to the bottom of the floor, the dies can be attached to the logs from above.
Parquet creaking can be eliminated by driving wooden wedges between the floor boards, maintaining a distance of 15-20 cm between them. It is important to ensure that the wedges do not protrude above the floor level. They can be hammered in gently with a hammer and a piece of metal bar.
Pouring glue under parquet
Before removing the creak of the parquet in this way, it is necessary to mark points in the centers of problem areas of the floor with a distance of 15 cm from each other and stick masking tape on them. Then you need to drill through holes in the dies according to the marks and pour glue under the parquet through them. The holes should be 2 mm in diameter and a syringe should be used to pour through them.
After that, the parquet flooring must be pressed with a heavy load to the base. After an hour, the glue will dry, after which the tape can be removed. If glue accidentally gets on the parquet, it can be removed with a solvent that is used to work with polyurethane foam.
The wax crayons should be matched to the color of the parquet in advance. A day after the completion of the repair, with their help, you need to fill the holes through which the glue was poured. The work is completed by polishing the parquet with a rag.
Using anchors to repair parquet
If the base of the parquet floor is a concrete slab, metal anchors can be used to eliminate its squeak, which will have to be fixed by hand.
First, a small hole is drilled in the covering, a metal shell is inserted into it, into which a pin is then screwed, tightly pulling the parquet with the concrete base.
This method is very effective, but also the most costly, since on average about 200 anchors may be needed to repair parquet sections, and each of them costs 10-15 rubles.
Parquet tightening with screws
If a squeak of parquet appears in the places of its contact with the logs, this problem can be eliminated by tightening the floor boards to the wooden beams. The only problem that can arise here is finding lag under the cover.
The repair procedure consists in additional fixing of the parquet board to the beam with two or three screws. A hole for fasteners is drilled from the side of the die in the log. After screwing in the screws, their caps must be drowned in the wood of the board, the resulting recess should be repaired with putty, and then sanded with sandpaper.
Pulling the parquet floor
This procedure is rather laborious, but at the same time it is cheap. Its essence lies in the fact that in order to eliminate the squeak of the parquet floor, it will be necessary to replace all the nails that serve as fasteners for the dies with screws. They are devoid of the main drawback inherent in nails - squeak in areas of contact with wood.
A nail driven into the wood usually holds its layers tightly, covering the metal. But over time, the metal rusts, decreases in diameter and weakens the fastening. Then a backlash appears, which is accompanied by a creaking sound.
After replacing the fasteners of the parquet on problem areas of the floor, the grooves from the screw heads should be sealed with wood putty, and then sanded. How to eliminate the creak of the parquet - watch the video:
Usually, measures to eliminate the squeak of parquet are combined with other related work, for example, flooring with varnish or wax. Together, all this will extend the life of the floor for many years, even taking into account its already considerable age.
