Can a subfloor that has been glued and screwed be pulled up?

9 years ago

More specifically, can it be pulled up without damaging joists? Our second floor wood flooring was installed on an improper thickness of subfloor for our 24"OC joist spacing. Our floors are making all sorts of crackling and popping sounds when walked on starting around 4-6 months after construction was done and we moved in. The only solution is to pull all the flooring up, pull the subfloor up, and redo with the properly sized subfloor. Is it possible to remove the subfloor (screwed and glued) without damaging the joists? We don't want to cause more problems (especially structural ones) down the road. We would hire someone to do this, but want to make sure it can be done. Thanks so much for reading and for any help!!!! Truly appreciate it!!!

Comments (3)

User
9 years ago
Pull the flooring and add additional plywood to the subfloor. Glued and screwed. No need to remove the existing subfloor.
robin0919
9 years ago
If it was done 'improper', is there NO recourse with the GC? What is the code for 'proper' thickness?
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ayva
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks so much for the replies!

We originally had planned for carpet upstairs. However, when we finally started shopping for the carpet, we realized how incredibly low our carpet allowance was. So, we said we wanted to do wood floors instead, since the extra amount was completely worth it. Our GC only said that our stairs needed to be adjusted in order to meet the new floor level upstairs with wood flooring instead of carpet. "Great," we thought! However, they did not tell us that the subfloor upstairs was only spec'd for carpet and not thick enough for wood, especially given the 24" OC joist spacing. We were building from 7 hours away, so we did not know just from sight what was there, and they never told us. So now they are blaming us for the pops and cracks we are hearing upstairs saying that it was because we changed from carpet to wood at the last minute. We are going back and forth with them now, hoping they will admit their error. The subfloor should have been at least 1" thick for OSB on top of 24" OC joists. Any additional thoughts on this? Thanks so much for reading!!!