Squeaking floorboards can be very annoying and often drive some house holders to despair, If you live in a flat and have squeaking floorboards then it may not be just you that can hear them. This can often cause bad feeling between neighbours and is often easily fixed.

Creaking floorboards or squeaking floorboards are not only a problem found in older houses but many newly built houses also have problems with noise that comes from walking on a wooden floor. Newer houses often use larger sheets of flooring grade chipboard rather than actual floorboards, these are often 8 foot Long and two foot wide.

Squeaking / creaking floorboards are often caused by the boards working loose over time, this often happens where the boards have been lifted and replaced for services such as central heating pipes or electrical wires. Often the squeak can be temporarily fixed by putting some powdered chalk or talcum powder between the joints in the floor, this can sometimes stop the noise but is not the perfect solution.

Before knocking any nail or screwing any screw through a floorboard you must ensure that there are no pipes or cables underneath! Often the only way to tell is to lift the board and check visually.

A screw through a wire could kill, or through a pipe could partially flood the house!

If a floorboard is squeaking and it is nailed down you could try removing the nails and replace them with Screws, this will often stop the squeaking as it stops any movement of the floorboard. The screw must not be larger than the nail that you have pulled out, if it is larger it could hit a service pipe or wire.

Here the two arrows are pointing at joints which could possibly be a cause of squeaking. In this particular case the joints are tongue and grooved at the ends as well as along the long edge.

If the boards were not tongue and grooved at the ends then the joint must be on a joist or additional support must be in place or else squeaking could occur.