New floor squeaking

[HammieUK]

Morning!

I'm approaching the end of a loft conversion, just painting and electrics left to do, to my dismay however the floor has started squeaking! It's 22mm t&g chipboard, all joints are glued and they're screwed down with 70mm screws. At first I thought it was because I'd not piloted the holes and the screw shanks were rubbing on the chipboard, but drilling pilot holes doesn't seem to have helped.

Thinking back, when I glued the joints I just put a thick bead of glue on top side of the groove, should I have put some on the underside too?

The other (probably more likely) possibility is that it's the joists that are squeaking. These are resting in the webs of the steels, with timber packed between them, these are only nailed to the joists at one end, my logic was that they needed to be able to expand and contract, in hindsight this wasn't the best idea!

Any other thoughts on what might be causing it? Whatever happens it's probably going to be a pull up floor job, which is a huge pain, but it will annoy me for ever more if I don't!

Thanks

 

[JohnD]

tighten the screws.

 

[masona]

And more screws.

 

[HammieUK]

Tightened up the screws with a big ratchet which helped, the floor no longer makes little cracking sounds, however the creaking remained. After much jumping up and down on the floor I managed to pinpoint the source of the creaking, one of the packing timbers between the joists was rubbing against a bolt head. When I removed the timber the creaking stopped, sadly though I had to cut the chipboard to get at it, so now I've gotta spend more time adding timber to support the edges. Oh well, at least I don't have to pull up the whole floor!

 

[JohnD]

it will probably benefit from being re-tightened in a couple of weeks.