Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is nothing more annoying than a squeaky subfloor, especially in a house that you paid good money for. Imagine my surprise when our relatively new home ended up having the squeaks and groans of a turn of the century barn house. The main floor creaks were easily dealt with, as I had access to them via the basement. For the 2nd floor squeaks however, they were not as easy...initially. Let me first say that I have purchased this product twice. The first time around I was not impressed at all, and although it seemingly took care of my floor noise in the master bedroom for a day or two, the ruckus quickly returned and I was so angry that I returned the product. After spending several hours and putting tens of screws through your carpet, you expect the problem to be fixed. Lo and behold I eventually discovered that it was not the subfloor that was doing most of the squeaking, but rather the baseboard/wall to floor connection! (see image) Apparently over time it is very common for the fasteners that secure your walls to your floor to get a little loose, especially in climates with drastic temperature fluctuations. THIS problem is easily fixed by hammering shims in between your carpet and your baseboard...it really works!!! So please check and see if that is the problem before you decide that this product doesn't work. On to my review... The system itself is pretty straightforward and the kit comes with everything you might need to be successful. These screws really DO break off under the carpet & padding and you will never know they are there! I have very close pile berber carpeting (see image) and I had no issues. Just make sure that you drive the screw down until there is only barely enough room to get the break-off tool onto the head of the screw and I promise you that you will be fine. Everything seems to be of high quality and I haven't had issues with anything breaking. Protip: When using the floor joist finder screws (there are two), make sure that you alternate every couple uses because they can get extremely hot and would probably break if used repeatedly many times in a row in a short amount of time. Finding the squeaks is generally easy. Finding the floor joists themselves can be a little trickier. Get down on your hands and knees in the general vicinity of the squeaks and press down hard with your fists moving perpendicular to your floor joists...eventually you will get to a point where when you press down, it will be silent! This is probably where your floor joist is and you have moved on to another piece of subfloor. Then you can use your joist finding tool to make sure that you are on the joist. The kit explains exactly how to use them properly. Keep in mind that you will probably need to use at least 2-3 screws for every squeak, as it is difficult to exactly hit the edge of the piece of subfloor and secure directly into the joist at the perfect spot. You can use a tape measure to get the distance from the wall to where your floor joist is (going perpendicular once again) and drive a few screws into the joist, staying as close to the edge of that piece of subfloor as you possibly can. I usually vary by 1/2 inch in either direction to make sure that at least 1-2 of my screws is in the exact position it needs to be. When snapping off the screw heads make sure that the screw is driven in AT LEAST as far as the tool will let you go. Going a little further will not hurt anything; but make sure you have some vice grips handy to snap the screw head off if you'd like to go a little deeper than the tool will allow. I generally go another full rotation sans tool very slowly to make sure I'm getting the best contact possible. I can also still use the tool to snap off the screw head going to that depth. YMMV. All in all, this kit successfully quieted many of my random squeaks throughout the house. Some are still there, but are so faint that only I would notice them; which I think is an acceptable solution considering I did not want to have to pull up carpet to re-secure and entire subfloor. This kit is not 100% effective, but is probably 80-90% effective at quieting your typical subfloor squeaks and noises; which I think is fantastic. O'Berry has done a very good job with this innovative kit.