Find Floor Joists Under Carpet - End Squeaky Floors
by stitzinger in Living > Life Hacks
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Find Floor Joists Under Carpet - End Squeaky Floors
Quick easy way to find floor joists under carpet. A major use is to find the floor joist locations so that floor squeaks can be eliminated.
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Find Joists Under Carpet
Magnet based Stud finders can find nails holding dry-wall to studs, but when trying to find nails in the floor magnetic stud finders don't work since the carpet and pad can be over an inch thick. Density change detectors like Walabot have trouble detecting a stud under sheets of plywood flooring.
Please read the warnings on handling Rare earth Magnets
A Rare Earth Neodymium sphere magnet makes it obvious where every nail is. Knowing where the nail is avoids hitting the nail if you are using something like Squeeeeek No More to screw the plywood back down to the floor joists so the movement of the plywood does not cause squeaking when rubbing on the nails.
On smooth carpet simply roll the ball and it will stop right on top of a nail. On contoured/plush carpet a sheet of Diamond Clear Covers allows the ball to roll right to the nail. The 10mil plastic is perfect as it allows the sphere to roll unhindered yet is flexible enough to be pulled down towards the nail.
It helps to know that most joists are 16" apart (on center). Our contractor happened to put nails every 6". Where two pieces of plywood meet you will probably find a double row of nails.
Videos show how obvious the nail locations are for both contoured/plush carpet using the plastic and flat carpet without plastic.
The Diamond Clear Covers were left over from Covid-19 mask making at our makerspace but anything similar like report covers would work.