Proper screws will fix annoying creaky-floor problem

Q. I live in a 25-year-old townhouse. Almost every floor in the house squeaks. I have read about the screws that can go through the carpet into the joist then break off so that the screw is not visible.

Have you had experience with them? I am most concerned with the living room, dining room combination and the master bedroom. I am grateful the stairs don't squeak. The rooms, especially the bedroom, are annoying. I have wall-to-wall carpeting and I'm not ready to replace it. I would appreciate any advice you can give me.

A. Buy Squeeeeek No More screws; they are perfect for the job. They are used to secure any floor, except ceramic or quarry tile, to the floor joists, even through carpeting.

I assume that you know how to locate the floor joists so you can screw into them, which is essential. If you don't know how, write again and I'll try to explain how to find them.

You may be able to find these screws in Ace Hardware, Lowe's or Menards stores. You can order the screws directly from O'Berry Enterprises Inc., 5306 Business Parkway, No. 110, Ringwood, IL 60072. Their toll-free number is (800) 459-8428 and their Web site www.123itsdone.com. There you'll find videos explaining how to proceed.

O'Berry Enterprises also makes Counter-Snap screws, used for hardwood floors and linoleum only. Both of these two screws will leave a very small countersunk hole once their top is broken off. You can then putty the hole with a crayon of the right shade that you can get in hardware or building supply stores.

Q. We are about to finish our basement and have a follow-up question on your column. Our basement is below grade on one side and there is a walkout on the other (our house is on a hill), and we are proposing to insulate and Sheetrock the inside of the hollow, concrete block wall. There are no signs of water except for one spot where it got in from the top when a drain backed up (on the walkout side). Should one waterproof the walls or not? After your column we asked two builders and got two different answers, yes and no.

A. I need to make sure I understand how the leak occurred. If at the top of the walkout part of the basement, the culprit must be a drain in the living quarters above. Otherwise, how could a ground drain leak from the top of a walkout wall? If you have never experienced leakage in your basement, you should feel secure in finishing it. Do not waterproof the hollow block walls; if water ever gets into their cores, it can accumulate since it will not be able to drain out. This is a prescription for disaster as the moisture evaporates upstairs. A variety of molds can develop and create very unhealthy conditions.

Q. About three years ago eggs were thrown at the front of our house leaving a stain on the steel door and vinyl siding. We attempted to clean the stain with high pressure washing and scrubbing with a cleaner. Is there a way to clean the egg residue/stain off the vinyl and steel door?

A. You didn't say which cleaner you used unsuccessfully. Try Fantastik, Murphy Oil Soap, Lysol, Lestoil or a solution of 30 percent white vinegar to 70 percent equal parts water and Windex. I hope one of these will work.

Q. My wife and I had a single-floor addition (bedroom/bath) to our full basement two-story house a few years ago. The addition is on a slab (radiant heat) with a frost-wall foundation. The windows are awning-type bottom with swing-open type top, and the bases are waist height above the ground. I mention this because damp evening air may be associated with the problem described below. There are two closets, one being an 8-by-10 walk-in. In both, dampness became more noticeable each year as the summer wore on.

We followed a recommendation in one of your columns to use humidity-reducing bags in each closet. These filled and were replaced about once a month. Last spring, we discovered mold/mildew had formed on shoes, belts and clothing, mostly near the inner and outer walls where it had gone unnoticed for some time. After cleaning up (easier said than done), we abandoned the humidity bags (after one broke) for humidity tubs and needed a new one about every month as well. I then installed damp-chaser rods, total 50 watts, which lowered the replacement rate on the tubs, but we still needed them well into November and are running the rods through winter.

We never had any problem like this on either of the floors in the main house. Is there any construction-related aspect to this problem that I might investigate? Or, is it a lack of air circulation (closet doors closed) or moist air entering from the nearby ground? Perhaps the awning windows aggravate things by funneling the moist ground air into the bedroom? Any suggestions would be appreciated, as I'm really not confident the rods and tubs will prevent a recurrence this year.

A. Yes, it may be a construction-related issue. I assume that rigid insulation was installed under the radiant slab, as it should be, and that the radiant heat coils are also in the closets' floors.

But is the frost wall insulated as well? If not, it may have something to do with the mold problem. Assuming that the closets are against outside walls, a frost wall that will be closer to the earth temperature than to that of the air by conduction can cool the closets floors as the radiant heat is shut off for the summer. Cool and damp night air also adds to the stress, as does the fact that the closets have no ventilation. Also important to know is how was the addition built? Were the walls and attic over the room built according to the highest standards of today's energy-conserving construction? What type of finish is on the closets' floors? Using moisture-absorbing bags and tubs is helpful, of course, but they are unlikely to remove enough moisture from the bottom of the closets where the coldest - and dampest - air is. Not knowing the answers to my questions, the only suggestion I have to offer is to keep the closet doors open in the summer and set up a fan in the doorway of each closet blowing inside and across the closets' floors to circulate the room's air into them.

Q. I was wondering if this is normal. We have hot-water baseboards and an oil furnace at our house. Whenever we turn on the faucet in the kitchen to get water to drink, it comes out really warm. It takes at least a minute for it to be cold and drinkable. This happens in the winter only when we are heating the house.

A. It sounds as if a cold water pipe is in contact with one of the heat pipes of your baseboard radiators. Ask a plumbing/hydronic heating contractor to check this out and see if there is a simple solution. Hopefully, this problem is not hidden in a wall.

Q. We have two bathrooms, one directly above the other on the two floors of our house. For the past couple of years when the super cold weather hits, the upstairs toilet will take down the solids, but leave the paper swirling around.

The downstairs toilet works fine. The pipes are not on an outside wall. Our soil is pure sand and we have no trouble with the septic system. The house was built in 1979. This phenomenon happens for about three months, beginning usually in January, then is fine the rest of the year. The toilets are water-saver types from 1979. Any clues or solutions?

A. All I can offer is a guess, and it isn't going to be helpful: The upstairs toilet suffers from the winter doldrums; give it some slack as long as it behaves properly the rest of the year. All kidding aside, I don't have any intelligent explanation. Are the two toilets of the same make, and what is the brand?

Q. I had termites and some of my sill plate is badly damaged. I have a crawl space where the damage is done. How is this problem corrected?

A. I am assuming that you have taken care of the problem and had the termites exterminated. Preventive measures to keep them away are also important.

As to the repairs, it depends on the amount of damage the termites have done. If the damage is not too extensive, and does not pose a significant structural problem, you may not need to do anything. But if the damage is severe enough that it may cause settlement of the floors or walls, the sill plates will need to be replaced. This a job best left to a competent contractor, as you don't want to risk causing additional damage by incurring some settlement that may damage interior finishes and may be more difficult to correct.

Q. We would like to remove paint from a cement wall at our cottage. Do you have any suggestions for removing paint from cement? We've waited 15 years for nature to do the job but I guess that's not going to happen.

A. You should be able to remove paint from concrete using a gel-type paint remover. Any paint or hardware store will have one or more brands, and the personnel can advise you on the best to use for this particular problem.

Q. We have a home off the lake that faces northwest. The front of the house has two sets of 8-foot sliding-glass doors that allow water into the house when it rains hard from the northwest. Last fall, we watched in shock as water flooded in from the tracks and covered our wood floors. We're not sure if replacing the sliding-glass doors with a better brand would make a difference (our house was built in 2002) or if installing French doors would solve the problem. Please give us your expert opinion.

A. You haven't told me what brand of doors you have, but they certainly do not seem to be of the best quality. To solve this vexing problem, you may need to replace the doors. A top-quality sliding (also called gliding) door usually has a better weather seal to water infiltration than a swinging door.

• Henri de Marne's column appears Sundays. He was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via e-mail at henridemarne@gmavt.net.

© 2009, United Feature Syndicate Inc.