Building floor, flooring & floor structure noise troubleshooting: causes & cures.

What are the causes and what are cures for floor and flooring noises such as noise of people walking, squeaks, creaks, or plain noise transmission?

These articles discuss building noise control: how to inspect, diagnose & cure noise or sound problems in homes or commercial buildings. We also discuss methods of sound or noise control in buildings during construction or as a building retrofit.

Flooring and Floor Noises in buildings

Flooring and Floor Noises in buildings are most often due to construction details, less often due to potentially unsafe structural movement or damage such as movement due to rot or insect attack.

• Creaky floorboards or stair treads are caused by movement of the floor board over the subflooring or over floor joist surfaces, particularly when someone walks across the loose flooring.
  
  Typical repair methods involve using screws, possibly glue, and stiffening plates affixed to the floor from below. If the floor is bouncy additional framing support may be required.
  
  A sneaky method for repairing loose floorboards from above can produce good results if there is n no access to the floor from below, by lifting an angled cut into the floorboard, driving a suitable screw, and gluing the cut back in place.
  
  Details are at LOOSE NOISY FLOOR REPAIR


• New floor and subfloor construction methods 
  
  often employ a combination of structural adhesive (between the joist top and floor or subfloor underside) as well as mechanical fasteners to make a floor more rigid and less noisy.
• Flooring may also be noisy because the supporting framing is more flexible
  
   than modern standards recommend.
• Noisy flooring can often be improved or eliminated by the use of mechanical fasteners 
  
  screwed into the flooring through joists from below.
• See AGE of a BUILDING, HOW to DETERMINE
  
  How to Determine the Age of a Building from Visual or Documentary Clues, identity of various building materials, construction framing styles, foundation design, and general architecture.
• Also see FLOOR TYPES & DEFECTS -
  
  inspection, diagnosis, repair, and installation tips for resilient flooring, vinyl and asphalt floor tiles, wood flooring, tile floors, carpeting in buildings.

To read about methods of controlling the transmission of sound from a floor to areas below or nearby

see FLOOR NOISE CONTROL

...

Continue reading at LOOSE NOISY FLOOR REPAIR or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

• GHOST NOISES in BUILDINGS
• WOOD FLOOR DAMAGE REPAIR

Suggested citation for this web page

FLOORING NOISES in BUILDINGS at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.

Or see this

INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to BUILDING NOISE DIAGNOSIS

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Citations & References

In addition to any citations in the article above, a full list is available on request.

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