Replacing (nearly new) floor substrate before wood flooring?

[elemoine]

On the advice of Matty, A new topic is started.

Newbuild flat (John Laing Partnership for Bethnal Green Victoria Park Housing Association), particle board substrate and loads of creaking. Have tried to find a way to lift particle board to investigate creaks, with no success so far. The particle board sheets have the odd screw in them, but any I have tried to get up simply turn in their holes and grow neither tighter nor looser. So, they might as well be those ribbed nails (impossible to pry up). Is it that building regs are lax on a few areas, such as floors? Why is a new floor creaking? I have taken up the carpet and want to lay a wood floor. Is the chipboard /creaking a problem that will never go away? Do you think I should replace the chipboard with ply before putting down an engineered or solid wood floor? As I am required by my lease to also put down soundproofing, is ply any better at contributing to soundproofing than chipboard?

Many, many thanks for your help, Matty. I really appreciate it!
elemoine

 

[mattysupra]

There is a few answers to this question. Lets start with- The floor you want to install. If you are going to lay floating then you are o.k to lay over the chipboard. You can also lay wedi boards (all tho i have never used them) to reduce noise. I tend to use fibre board and then solid rubber underlay over the top to reduce noise transfer. If your glueing to subfloor i would first put 6mm plywood down pinned to chipboard and then glue to this. If you want to nail new floor down you have to take up chipboard and replace with plywood 18mm or better still 22mm. Reason being when you shoot nails/cleats into chipboard it blows a hole into the back of the chipboard leaving the fixing trying to grab onto a couple of mm of chipboard. It will fail! I always try to replace chipboard with plywood tho no matter what your fitting. If correctly fitted and screwed you will never get a squeak! You can also depending on timber used and joist centers nail direct to the joists all tho i do not like this method. But perfectly o.k method to install flooring. Anyway there's your basics if you need more info myself or my partner in crime woodyoulike will be happy to help. o and the creaking you got now is normally down to installer error and yep its there for life unless you correct it.