DIYbanter - View Single Post - Finding Joists Through Hardwood

wrote:
I'm recarpeting the living room soon and want to eliminate all of the
squeaks in the floor. I've got 5/8 or 3/4 hardwood over 1X6's diagonal
to the joists. The hardwood is in pretty bad shape and I never plan on
refinishing it, so my plan is to just drive screws through it to the
joists.

My basement is finished with 12 X 12 interlocking acoustic tiles,
stapled to furring strips - not a fun thing to remove to get a look at
the joist locations.

Is there a stud sensor out there that could find the joists from above?
The zircon website says up to 1.5" deep, but I'm close if not over
that.

I tried scanning for floor joists through hardwood and subfloor just one
time to make an opening for a new return air duct. To my surprise it
worked perfectly. The detector is a Zircon "VIDEOSCANNER 5.5" and it has
a regular scan and a "deep" scan and at this late date I can't remember
which mode I used. But even then I did drill a couple of tiny test holes
to reassure myself before whacking a great hole in the floor.

Measuring for some assumed spacing with floor joists is probably not as
reliable as when locating studs since doubling of joists to support
walls and heavy loads is pretty common and when a wall upstairs falls
between normal spans you will usually find an extra joist thrown in to
support it.
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com