Oak Flooring from Hackworth Sawmill

The squeaky hardwood floor - a horror story

Things do sometimes go wrong with hardwood flooring, but in my experience it can always be traced back to environmental factors, especially damp, or bad workmanship in fitting. The interesting thing is that it is inevitably the wood flooring which is blamed. A case in point was the squeaky floor. I was called out by a customer to whom I had supplied some solid oak flooring which his builders were going to fit. I had advised that they should fix wooden battens to the existing concrete, and then nail the hardwood floor to the battens. They had got as far as fitting about two metres of battens and flooring from one side of the room, but had to stop because the floor squeaked badly when the customer walked across it, and had retired, with the customer, to the pub pending my arrival. By the time I arrived, the customer was insistent (as well as inebriated), along with the builder and his two men, that the problem was that the floor was badly machined, even though I pointed out that it was exactly the same as the thousands of square metres supplied to other customers. I realised that it was no use arguing with them, and so undertook to put the matter right. They assumed that this meant replacing the oak flooring. The next day, Saturday, when I knew that I would have the customer to myself, I set about lifting the wood floor, expecting some difficulty pulling flooring nails out of the wooden battens. To my surprise, the boards just lifted up with no trouble. The builders had nailed the floor down using a nail gun firing small, thin, smooth nails which were not much better than dressmaking pins. Fault number one. I then examined the battens as far as they had got, and immediately saw the root of the problem. The concrete floor was very uneven, the builders had screwed the battens to the concrete at 1000 to 1500 mm centres depending on where the battens touched, and had put no packing between them and the concrete where there were gaps. There was considerable "give" when I walked on the battens, so no wonder the floor squeaked. I re-fitted the floor as far as the builders had done, screwing the battens at 300 mm centres with packing to support where necessary, and using proper serrated flooring nails. The problem was solved except that the builders still insisted that the hardwood flooring was faulty, said that they had not enough time to "put all those fixings in the battens", and walked out on the job. I finished it. Result, a happy customer, no squeaks, a stunning hardwood floor.