A1 Wood Flooring - Your Guide to Finding, Caring for, and Maintaining Beautiful Wood Flooring

Get That Floor Leveler Going

As we all know, floors in older properties are very often out of level. And we mean seriously out of level, so walk on them is like a roller coaster ride. Generally, this is caused when floor joists bow under the weight placed on them. As we find out when we try to fit a new wardrobe, bowed joists can make life a little difficult. So our advice to you is: get that floor leveler going!

And we may as well tell you that it is futile to lift the floor by ‘packing out’ between the boards and the joists because the packing invariably works loose as the floor moves. A far easier and more cost effective floor leveler strategy is to remove the floorboards and level the joists by fixing new straight ones to the existing. It is also possible to repair and replace some joists without disturbing the entire floor.

Floor leveler tips you should know

If the brickwork is loose, damp and crumbling, check the joists for wet and dry rot. You may require professional aid for this, and it is abundantly available on the Net
You can buy new, sawn timbers from a builder or timber merchants. But check each new joist by laying it on a level surface, on its narrow edge. Or else you may end up replacing bowed timbers with bowed timbers, and your floor leveler strategy is in ruins
If the existing bow is the result of a weak timber, simply fixing a new, straight one to its side will be enough. The new timber should cover the entire length of the old joist even if there is only a slight bow in the middle
If the bow is due to the base of a joist support (brickwork or timber) having crumbled away over time, this fault must be addressed before the joist is repaired. Crumbling bricks should be replaced, and if the end of the timber has crumbled, look for damp in the wall, and rot in the timbers. Unless you address these issues, floor levelers are of no use
Use “joist hangers” for your new joists if the old joists offer little support. Joist hangers are galvanized metal brackets, into which you slot a joist. They have a strong lip, which is inserted into a brickwork joint or fixed on a timber/ steel support

Before closing this section, however, we wish to say that the above steps are unlikely to work for homes built on a hillside, or on soil that expands when wet, or in earthquake-prone regions. In such cases, a soils engineer and structural engineer will be best suited to do the maintenance.

When do you need a floor leveler?

Out-of-level floors can not only can cause cracks over windows and doors and make them tough to operate, they are a serious safety hazard as well. Thus, you need to level the floor as soon as you can. But how do you know when to do so? Well, simply borrow a marble from the kids and place it in various locations on the floor throughout the home. If the marble doesn’t stay put, your floor isn’t level. This is serious advice, by the way, for the doubting Thomas.

Types of floor levelers

So once you take the ‘marble test’, and find that you need to make the necessary repairs, you may choose to tear out the flooring to apply a floor-leveling compound with a trowel. However, you’ll want to leave this one to the pros because the material that is used in the compound dries in minutes. So if you don’t know what you are doing, you could end up with a bigger problem than you had before you began!

Alternatively, go online and search for a whole range of floor leveler compounds. With a little expert advice, you ought to find the right one for your needs. Floor levelers mainly come in powder or liquid versions, and you need to keep these factors in mind while buying: