Hardwood Flooring With Joists

Floor joists are an important part of the supportive structure of a floor.

Hardwood flooring with joists.

Joists are installed at a very early stage in the building process and in older. The extra two inches of vertical distance when a floor is framed with 2 x 10 joists rather than 2 x 12s can be quite important for example. They are covered with subflooring panels of plywood or oriented strandboard osb to complete the floor s structural assembly and create the solid continuous platform on which you install tile carpet or other finish flooring. How to install hardwood flooring diagonal to floor joists.

Face nail each board at the point of every joist and set the nail with a nail set. Joists are spaced at regular intervals much like the studs in a wall frame. The most common way to lay install hardwood flooring is by aligning the planks parallel to the longest wall or run in the installation. To fix a floor covered with deep pile carpet drive a wallboard screw through the carpet and pad into the floor joist.

A flooring contractor howard brickman responds. First renail the existing plywood subfloor so that the old nails are tight and add new nails to achieve a maximum nail spacing of 6 inches. Common sense tells you that large floor joists can carry more load and spacing joists closer together also increases the load bearing capacity of a floor. Older houses with 1 inch planks running diagonally to the joists can support flooring planks running parallel to the joists.

Floorboard direction is an important decision when planning a hardwood floor and there is more than one reason to install them diagonally. Prefinished floors are more likely to show gaps between the boards than finish in place floors because the latter is sanded flat prior to finishing. Align the edge of the board with the chalk line and drill pilot holes down through the hardwood plank and into the sub floor and joist. No matter what you do you should eliminate squeaks on the subfloor first by screwing the floor down through the sub floor to the joists anywhere you can hear squeaking.

If the subfloor is a concrete pad these structural considerations don. Separate wooden bridging members to eliminate noise problems. With hardwood floors drive ring shank or cement coated flooring nails into the seams between boards. Apart from a few exceptions like sagging joists this is the preferred direction to lay wood floors because it provides the best result aesthetically.

Begin by selecting a long board to start the first row. If the subfloor is stiff enough there is no reason why solid nail down strip flooring can t be run parallel to the joists.