How To Repair Squeaky Floors Underneath Carpeting

Is there anything more annoying than quietly tip-toeing through your home and the floor beneath your carpet starts making loud squeaking sounds? The floors in your home can alter and shift a bit over time. In many cases, this causes no issues. But sometimes you are left with floors that squeak underneath your carpet.

When the floor joists disconnect from the sub-floor, your floors can start squeaking, even when they are covered with carpet. Reconnect them using three-inch screws and a power drill. You can find the location of your floor joists using a hammer and listening for a dull thud. Once you connect the sub-floor back to the floor joists, you can snip the screw so you can’t see or feel it through the carpet.

The most common cause of squeaky floors under carpet is found several layers below the carpet itself. Over time, the floor joists that are connected to the sub-floor and floor itself can release, which creates a slight gap. This gap is all it takes to create that unbearably annoying squeak that you desperately want to silence.

The good news is, you probably have the tools and skills necessary to stop this squeaking. In order to do so, you need to re-attach the sub-floor to the framing in order to stop the pesky noises. This might sound complex, but it is actually a fix that you can do yourself, and best of all, you can have it done in one day without tearing up your flooring, or even your carpet.

The hardest part about this project is identifying where the floor joists are. This can be a bit challenging since you have carpet, padding and sub-floor all layered over these floor joists. Luckily, in many cases, all you need is a hammer.

Using a hammer, begin lightly tapping on the carpeted floor, hard enough so you can hear the sub-floor bang a bit. Move an inch or so in one direction, and continue until the noise changes from the higher pitched tap to a lower-pitched thud. The thud means you have found a floor joist. Continue to mark floor joists until you have identified all floor joists near where your floor squeaks.

Pro Tip: If you are fixing squeaky floors on the second floor, you should be able to see which direction the floor joists go by taking out a light fixture on your first floor ceiling and checking the direction from that angle.

Once you have identified the squeaking location and have labeled the location of the floor joists, you are ready to reconnect them. You can always purchase a floor repair kit with screws and such included. Or you simply buy screws that are at least three inches long. Make sure they have at least 1 inch of a smooth section at the top.

Get on your knees and use your weight to help push the sub-floor onto the floor joists. Screw in the screw using your power drill. Make sure it reaches to the bottom of the carpet, which ensures it has reached the floor joist.

Do this along the floor joist every 8 inches in the entire squeaky area. Once you have finished, grab the head of the screw using channel lock pliers. Twist the screw side to side and front to back until the screw pops off. Make sure the screw pops off at floor level and there is nothing sharp protruding out. Now your floors should no longer squeak.