Rugs, Carpets and Carpeting - squeeking floor under berber & laminate floor

Mods, please feel free to move this as I wasn't sure where to post it.

The majority of my ranch cond is covered in berber carpert, with only the bathrooms and kitchen having lenolium. The majority of the floor squeak quite badly when walked on. Some areas more than others. The basement is unfinished and have complete access to the joists and flooring from below.

Ideas? I am going crazy

do you really fly jets ? man, i would love to do that !

anyway. have someone walk on the floor, while you look/listen from below. if you can see/hear/feel that it is the subfloor. perhaps glue would fix it. or some brackets or something screwed in would fix it.

Many squeaks as you describe are caused by the plywood underlay coming loose and rubbing against an adjacent sheet. Also, if it was nailed down, the nails may loosen slightly and will squeak as the plywood rubs on the shaft of the nail.

You are lucky in that you have full access from underneath. There are multiple ways to fix this.

Here is a place that has several products all on one page, instead of me explaining each one. The Squeek-no-more for carpets is supposed to work pretty well.

Squeaky Floor Repair (http://www.installerstore.com/home.php?cat=45&gclid=CMWrr4Wnu5cCFRKLxwod6Hx4cw)

This is why many builders now use adhesive and screws to hold the underlay.

There are other ways that would work. Taking a length of 2 x 4, id the squeeking area, construction adhesive on the upper edge of the 2 x 4, place next to the joist and push up against the undelay, then screw to the joist, let adhesive set up before walking in the area. I wouldn't want to do that for a large number of problem areas though.

It could be that your joists are just undersized, or were not installed crown up and that is causing the problem. In that case, best fix would be to just sister another joist to each one.

I'm not familiar with any repair techniques available for this problem from below the floor. I'm not saying they won't work, I just have no experience with it. The only thing that has ever worked for me has been to uninstall all the carpet, screw down the floor untill it no longer complains, and then re-install the carpet. For vinyl covered floors that squeak, I normally screw right through the existing floor and then install another skin of vinyl over it.

With someone heavy walking above, you can identify squeaks. Install shims between subfloor and joists.

Thanks for the tips...I'll be trying them out in the coming weeks.

wish me luck

Here is some interesting reading on fixing squeaks - depending on the cause.

Repairing Squeaky Floors from the Natural Handyman Do It Yourself and Home Repair website (http://www.naturalhandyman.com/iip/inffloor/infsqe.html#2)