Good flooring in a wooden house, a log cabin, a bathhouse or a country cottage relies on the quality of the installation of floor beams and subfloor sheathing. Among other things, this structure determines how long the floors will serve you and how comfortable they will be.
According to their technical characteristics, subfloor sheathing is required for the following reasons:
- Thanks to their structural mechanisms, subfloor joists make it possible to ventilate basement areas.
- Due to the resulting space, you can install engineering utility systems.
- Competent installation of subfloor sheathing stands for levelled horizontal floors in the future.
- It is possible to resolve the issue thermal insulation and soundproofing with the help of subfloor sheathing.
- Floors installed on subfloor sheathing bear a distributed load between the layers.
When it comes to the size of subfloor sheathing, size does matter. It should be sufficient, so that it does not bend under a certain load that is, it should have sufficient rigidity. As a rule, 50x100mm boards are used for subfloor sheathing. The installation interval depends on the thickness of the floorboards that are laid across the joists, but on average it amounts to 50mm. The thicker the floorboard, the bigger the interval between subfloor joists. You can also proceed from average sizes, determined by measurements of construction materials. Namely, choose a distance between joists of about 600mm, so that you would not have to cut little by little the insulation or other material that is installed between joists; in this way you save on excess material if only a bit. Consequently, for joists that are installed at such an internal, you need to choose the thickness of flooring of not less than 30mm.
We would like to pay special attention to the fact that if you do not follow the simple rules for installing subfloor sheathing in a wooden house, you may encounter some problems later. The most common of them - squeaky floors. When the joists are curved, that is, they do not create a horizontal surface, the floorboards are somewhat misaligned. Of course, by fastening the floorboards you push them down and level them, but in this case, uneven pressure occurs in some areas of the wood, which will be compensated sooner or later, and, as a result, a crack or something else might appear. When you installed subfloor joists that are thinner than necessary or choose an interval that does not correspond to the thickness of floorboards, then the floors will sag, perhaps just slightly, but enough to create those squeaky sounds. At first, it is imperceptible, but then the creaking of the floors starts to annoy. It is also important not to forget that a wooden house is a moving structure. The house takes quite a long time to settle. It is necessary to take this information into account.
The North House company constructs and installs subfloor sheathing in accordance with all the requirements for this type of works. You will be spared from minor troubles caused by substandard work at different stages of the construction.