soft floors

A friend of ours found something similar in his private estate (don't know the builders). He replaced the boarding with proper floorboards as the existing floor was in serious danger of falling through. Not sure what he did about the walls though.

I've had to remove floor boards from under a similar wall myself (they'd been hacked to put in pipes by the previous owner and were JUST balancing on the edge of a joist). I was able to cut the boards to very close to the wall and then either slide them out, or if there were nails through them, split the boards with a chisel to get them out without removing the nails between wall and joist. I then slotted the boards around the nails again. You might also need to use some small wedges to brace the wall if your new boards are a fraction thinner than the existing boards (mine weren't).

If you do this, try and remove a few, insert a few, as it means you always have other boards close by to allow you to lever the wall a fraction to help sliding the new floorboards under. If there is a significant gap under the wall, you probably want to block this up and avoid creating a path for any fires.

Paul DS.

You said Barrett who are a well known bunch of crapheads. Sounds like they did not bother to control the joist spacing to suit the board dimensions. Then they couldn't be arsed to trim the boards to get the joint over the joist.

If you wish to keep the flooring, you could probably get away with a few noggins between the joists under the joint. Perhaps 1 noggin every couple of feet. Just use a bit of 3x2 or 4x2 cut to fit tight at right angles, then 2

Or run a circular saw set to just cut the depth of the chipboard and remove the section that carries the joint. Aim to leave the remaining pieces overlapping the joist half way, then cut a new bit of board of the same thickness to fill the gap. It will be more springy than normal as it is not spanning multiple joists but it will be better than what you have now.

A TCT blade in the saw will have less problems if it hits the odd nail.

Often is, for studwork+PB walls.

The joints running at right-angles to the joists will certainly be free-floating - just like they are with floorboards. One might reasonably hope that joints parallel with the joists would actually be supported by a joist - but that might not always be the case.

My solution would be to take up some of the boards where 'softness' occurs, and fix some noggins between the joists to provide additional support.

Assuming that the 'walls' are stud partitions, this is entirely normal. The whole of the upstairs will have been floored in one go, and then the internal walls will have been constructed on top of the floor. My house

- built in the 1960's, and using floorboards rather then chipboard - is exactly like that. It makes life interesting when you need to take up a floorboard which runs under a wall into the next room!

...snip...

Builders have been doing this for sometime - 1923 in my case ;-).

Paul DS.

I lived in a rented 1969 Anglia-homes built place which suffered with this. One of the other residents ended up with a hole in his bedroom floor at an unsupported join. He would never say what happened, but as he was a keep fit bloke, we used to tease him that he'd pushed his hand through the floor whilst doing press-ups.

They also didn't use the rot-proof grade chipboard in the bathroom, which meant that one day the toilet fell through the floor.

Other than that, I didn't come across any other major issues with the house.

If you have a particularly bad bit, you could cut it back to the joists, and drop in a new piece.

If you want to strengthen a floating join (and you can get to the underside, either from underneath or because one side can be lifted out), you can use the same method which is used to repair an access panel cut in chipboard floor. Fix a length of timber straddling the join to the underside. You glue and screw it to one side of the join, and screw it only to the other side (otherwise you have to pretty much destroy the floor if you ever want to separate the two parts again).

Yes.

It is good fun getting those boards up:-)

On 06/02/2012 15:20, Roger Mills wrote: ...

It is also done using lightweight building blocks.

Colin Bignell