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I have a house built in the late 1970s and it has chipboard (plywood) floors. It is a two story house and the floors on the bottom floor (ground level) especially tend to creak loudly, especially in the winter when it is dryer. It is most noticeable in carpeted rooms that also have a carpet pad and not in non-carpeted rooms.

  • The upstairs floors also creak but you with the exception of one spot can't hear it in the rest of the house.
  • Downstairs there are many spots and in one room it is almost every spot which also tends to be the warmest room in the house even with all furnace vents closed due to a systems running (BOINC) always going.
  • There is a 5ft dry crawl space on a cement foundation below the bottom floor, very well insulated and within the house's "seal" but is vented to the outside (non-fan). Note the room that is noisiest has a sealed combustion furnace directly below it so I can't do much "below".

I thought about it being a moisture / dryness of the boards and I have run a table top humidifier in the room with the door closed for a day to see if that works, but that does not noticeably helped and has not something I would want to also run on an ongoing basis due to other things in the room. Regularly shampooing or steaming the carpet would be impractical as well.

Are there any simple and inexpensive tricks short of replacing the floor boards and or putting down new carpet and carpet pads to reduce the noise generating by these creaking floor boards?

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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about DIY. I believe this question is a much better question within the scope of Home Improvement. I think the OP will get more expert answers since flooring solutions are not hacks, but proven methods to solve the problem.
    – Jon
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 8:44
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    @Jon The argument could be made about many of the posts in this forum and I am looking for a "Novel" solution, if one exists. If it is migrated it is, but half of the "related" showing up in my related column also should and the "House" tag should also be removed from LifeHacks, per the Meta Post of what is and is not in scope of LifeHack.
    – CRSouser
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 12:28
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    Here is the thing about your particular problem. The basic answer is you need to tighten your floor. What is involved in doing that is the domain of expertise, not the domain of hack or work around. That is why I believe this particular question belongs in Home Improvements.
    – Jon
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 13:19
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    @Jon Being on-topic on another exchange does not mean that it's off-topic here. That said, I'm not sure where this question would get a better answer -- for now, the question's here; let's see what happens. I don't see anything in the current version of this question that would make it off-topic here.
    – Shokhet
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 22:39
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    Don't need to migrate this, @vladiz - check out this question, and then if that doesn't work this one - then ask a follow-up if the solutions there don't work for you.
    – Shog9
    Commented Dec 30, 2014 at 23:35

1 Answer 1

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Lift the carpet. Hammer down the nails that have come loose. Replace the carpet.

Optionally

You can add screws to hold the plywood sub-flooring to the joists. Screws have a roughly 40% better "grip" than nails.

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