"TimW" wrote in message
...
On 21/08/2020 18:13, George Miles wrote:
I'm replacing floorboards having rewired underneath
- nail or screw ?
what are the pluses and minuses of each?

Plan to paint it, so would that make the screws unscrewable?

PZ2 or another kind of head?

advice and experiences please

George


You may be as suprised as I was to find that screwfix sell specific
floorboard screws. They don't need pre drilling, don't force the board off
the joist (but tighten it down) and have tiny self countersinking heads. -
Marvelous!

The main thing is that you want to be able to lift the boards (either long
narrow ones or large rectangles of MDF) in case you need access underneath.

We had a vile smell of rotting meat upstairs and narrowed it down to
somewhere in the loft. I searched in between the boxes and cases on the
floorboards, and shone a torch into the eaves. Nothing. So I shone the torch
up the gap between the boards and the rafters - luckily the boards finished
away from the eaves. And there was a dead rat up one of them.

So I cleared everything off the MDF boards above the rat and unscrewed all
the relevant screws, The boards didn't budge *at all* - not even allowing
for the fact that they *might* have been tongue-and-grooved together. I
think the idiots who laid that floor in the loft had glued the boards to the
rafters, and just used the screws for extra belt-and-braces - or for
decoration!

Luckily I was able to lie on a board with a margarine container gaffer-taped
to a garden cane, and hook the corpse closer to the unboarded part, and then
pull it out with my hand inside a bag - not nice, but I wrapped it up
quickly in several bags which I sealed before putting the package in the
bin.

But if the rat had died further under, or between a couple of the
cross-beams at right angles to the rafters, we'd have been utterly stuffed.
I'm sure the smell would have got worse before it got better. At least I
could see where it was and could see when my "hook" device was in the right
position.

So I'd say that you should always plan for lifting the boards, even if they
are normally firmly screwed down to stop them creaking when someone walks
over them when they are in the loft.