Solid wood flooring nailers - cleats vs. staples

[Neil Bosdet]

Yes, much clearer. OK. How thick is the tile? You may want to double the 3/8" ply in the tile area to even the floor height. Most tile is roughly 3/8" thick and your hardwood floor is 3/4". I would screw every 1x6" board to the joists before you put down ply. Then glue and screw the ply down to the 1x6. You should eliminate all opportunities for squeaks this way.

[robert raess]

the very first nailer i bought was a porter-nailer, and i liked the ratched action.then as i did more floors i switched to the manual power-nailer,but that was short lived because air assist were on the market, and i never looked back. tho i still have both manual nailers, to rent out or small repair or lack of electric.When i bought my air assist they were both[bostich] staplers.I did a batch of hickory and other woods prone to splitting and a friend of mine who had won some 'floor of the year' awards ,said switch to cleats.I bought a kit to switch them over to cleats and am glad that i did.reasons: less splitting,easier to set by hand if mis-hit,easier to pull out.I have not used any of the brands other than the ones i mentioned as well as prima tech[canada].face nailing : i use sub-floor caulk to minimize the no. of nails used. The nails i do use i shoot into the dark grain or a solid knot,so when i fill, the eye is not drawn to a 'blank' space with a dot in the middle.OSB does not hold[a nail] as well as plywood,thats a fact.If the OSB has been exposed to water even more true.I always use 15 lb. felt under a nail down floor. It mitigates squeaks between wood and subfloor,and it is a vapor retarder.I have also noticed on tearouts[due to flood] that the back of the boards have black spots of tar around the hole that the cleat pierced the bottom of the board and into the tarpaper, so it does somewhat heal the hole made by the cleat.GO BADGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Robert MacKinnon]

Thanks for the reply Neil. The floor integrity is quite fine; it's not because of poor structural integrity that I am considering this subfloor strengthening. I might have been misleading in my post. The 2x8 joists are in great shape. The original installation is missing nails in some floorboards causing them to be loose. The floor "bounces" in these areas because there is nothing to hold the subfloor board to the joist. But moreover, the original floor used to squeak in these areas. I could screw down the loose boards to the joists but there is another overriding concern I have. The new installation will have half the floor with 3/4" T&G solid hardwood flooring and the other half will be 17x17 porcelain tile. I'm going to use Ditra on the tile floor but it was recommended to me by a couple of tile installers to strengthen the foor in the areas where the tile will be laid to prevent cracking of the tiles in future. Since I would consider adding this ply overlay primarily for the tile floor, it is a no-brainer to continue the ply overlay into the hardwood floor areas (1) to reduce the chance of floor squeaks and (2) to create a uniform subfloor surface throughout the project area.

My question was addressing my concern that I would be using a sufficiently strong ply product to achieve my goals. Is that explanation clearer?

I'd just like to feed back my experience with this flooring project. It might be useful for others.

I decided to use 1/2" interior/exterior spruce ply as the subflooring enhancement material. It was a compromise between 3/8" which I felt to be too thin and 3/4" which I felt was way over-kill. It worked like a dream.

First, I went through the project area and used 3" flooring screws to fix all 1x6 floorboards that were obviously squeaking or loose.

Then, I laid down the ply sheets, butting them together and used the same 3" flooring screws to screw through the ply and existing subfloor into the joists. I had previously marked the centres of the joists on the baseboard before laying the ply sheets. I temporarily fixed the sheets in place with a couple screws and snapped chalk lines to show the joist centres. I used about a floor screw every 8-12". There was no need for construction adhesive or floor glue to fix the ply sheets. There were butt joints parallel to the floor joists which were midway. For these, I drove screws in at an oblique angle so that the thread bit into the 1x6 floorboard. It worked admirably.

The work took 2 days for about 700 sq. feet and one worker (me). The resulting floor is rock solid. There is no perceptible flex in the floor and no more squeaking.