O'BERRY Enterprises 3251 Squeak Replacement Screw (50 Count)

After hearing some ridiculous contractor quotes, I went online looking for a solution to my impossibly squeaky floors. We have a cat and you could hear the thing walking they were so bad. The hardware store guys told me you just learn to live with it...after four years in this house I was going crazy. Saw this thing demo'd online and gave the starter set a try. They're not perfect, but when you can find a joist they work very well.Couple things:- if you have an older home with older hardwoods, the holes are nearly invisible among the other surface imperfections. Make sure you pick up a couple colors of wood putty, one darker than your floors and one lighter, so that you can mix them like play-dough and get your color right.- That's important because the screws do not always snap off - I'd say it works about 80-85% of the time. The little tool they give you does not snap the screws as neatly as they show in the video. And in working it around, you enlarge your holes a bit. Or sometimes the screw doesn't generate enough torque to snap before it just starts chewing through the wood and you're just spinning. Then you back it out and either put it in planning to snap it or just fill the hole you create during the mangling process to break it off.- I found these to be useless between joists. Probably a personal situation with our house and the old nails, but the only sound reduction came when the flooring was re-secured to the joists.- In an old house, not all of the joists are 16" apart. Fortunately our basement is unfinished and I was able to see a lot of the time where I was going wrong. Some areas were covered, however, and then it's hide and see. I looked far and wide for a good stud finder that could penetrate 2" of hardwoods and subfloor. Bosch has one that said it could but home depot had stopped carrying it at the store I tried. I found when hunting for a joist that normally the worst of the squeak was directly at the joist. If you can use a finger and create the squeak (vs. jumping on it), you're probably very close.I'm about 200 screws in at this point and have only had one pre-break below the surface but not at the 1/8" that they specify. I find that they torque up a little better if you're going slow so I have a reasonable speed going until I get close to the guard and then slow appreciably. At that point, I'm drilling no faster than I could by hand which seems to work the best.Overall, considering that I had no way to approach some of my floors from underneath, that even if I had, the option of nailing a 2"x4" to the joist and then angling up into the sub-floor sounded like a true waste of time, I think these are the greatest invention I could have asked for. Even using the square drill attachment (vs. say a Phillips) was genius as you never strip a screw.My entire toolkit for this is a set of vise grips, a long paperclip (bend it in half so you don't drop it), tape measure, putty, flashlight, some tape to mark the joist centers and a drill. I'd rate it very easy on the difficulty scale. It is time-consuming, however, and you go through screws like crazy. 6 joists per avg bedroom x 11 feet x 2-3 screws per foot and you're easily over 100 per room even if you're just attacking the squeaky spots (if your rooms are as noisy as ours were).Sweet bliss coming into the house now - I'm almost afraid to walk on them.Good luck!Update - 2 weeks later - couple hundred more screws in place. Still a fan - figured out two things:1) they will quiet spaces between joists, just put in a grid, spacing them 4" apart, so in 1 sq. ft, you'll use around 16 screws to silence it. compare that to a joist, where you get about 3" of silence on either side when you can snug the floor back down to the joist. ups your total per room substantially. i picked up a 500 pack for the weekend.2) resist the temptation to rock the screw head back and forth to minimize floor damage - hold the tool like an airplane thrust lever and push forward only. faster and less frustrating.

Works great- 2 screws eliminated the floor squeak.

I live in the 1st floor of a 2-family house and the floor squeeks are horrendous. I found these screws do work though alot of them are needed. Most of them seemed to not go into the floor joists since the house is older and nothing was constructed using a tape measure it seems.I realized a good way to locate the framing is to use a thin drill bit and drill up into the ceiling from the floor below. My ceiling is the trowel looking plaster surface so filling in the holes afterwards was easy with some light weight spackle. Takes alot of trial and error to locate the joists but when you do just map it out, I measured from the walls and made a nice diagram showing where the joists were located. Then when upstairs just use a tape measure and measure off the walls and you should hit the joists.I must have used 3 of these 50 packs of screws and i just ordered another pack because theres more squeeks that have developed upstairs. I dont think you can use enough of these screws, buy extra because you will probably use them all.Installing the screws is super easy using the kit. Once the screw is in place I just use a large pair of pliars and snap the heads off. Cant even tell any work was done.

I bought locally the complete kit, comes with 50 screws, which were barely enough to get started; since I was committed to rid those squeeeeeks, I went ahead and bought this box. Used them all, up to the very last.I will go "in like hot knife on butter" but you definitely must pre-drill with the 1/2 in drill on hard/soft wood so although annoying having to pre-drill 300 holes, it makes it much easier for them to "go in". The only one I did not pre-drill all way through (2 1/4") it broke before reaching proper depth so I had to place another by its side.The original setting tool is nylon/plastic so it will wear out pretty soon; on the other hand, after placing in the first 50, about 10 of them did not snap so I had to reverse to remove and put them again, eyeballing to proper depth. Then, I gave up and started placing them all free hand. It was a much faster work as I just hand started the screws and went in with the power screwdriver/All in all, if you have a whole lot of squeaks, be prepared to commit and use a lot of screws. In my house I would probably use about 3 boxes for each room plus 3 more for the hallway. Yeah, in "this old house" the entire upper floor squeaks.Anyway, the worst places in half my bedroom and 1/10 of the hallway that were the worst, are way better. Not 100% squeak free, but ok, considering how it was before. Like I said, I was committed so I went ahead happily like a woodpecker making holes but eventually, this upper floor will have to have its entire floor re-done using new subfloor, contruction adhesive and screws in order to properly install new hardwood.Recommended ? Only if you don't care for the holes. Even covered, they are noticeable - and if the filler doesn't match > 90% then this may not be for you.