DIY how to repair a mobile home subfloor. Shows total floor repair. The techniques will work for all types of floors. When you have water damage in mobile homes, usually they have particle board and needs to be removed completely. The board will continue to rot under the plywood if you just try to cover it over.
Phil goes through how to put extra support, and ways to prevent those irritating humps in your floor.
⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️
00:00 Tools needed for the job
01:23 Electric tools you could use
02:25 Reason he likes screws
03:35 Why you would want to use an impact driver
05:00 If you strip the screw, pull it out and grab another
05:56 How to replace swelled up damaged floor
06:50 Want to find the nails, that’s your rafter. Make a hole to get started
07:00 If on a budget, you can use a hammer and chisel to remove the floor by the drywall
07:35 Run Sawzall at an angle to get closest to the drywall
08:35 Over the joist want to raise the sawzall
10:28 Want to make sure and get down to 2×6″ get it clean
11:05 Why you don’t want to go over the top of particle board
12:10 You need to take the particle board all the way off and put plywood down
12:28 And we’re back, have cleaned along the walls
13:00 Find your joists, want to cut between them, then tilt the particle board back and forth
14:35 What about water and electric lines? Make sure to cut open the underbelly to get the water out
15:30 How to get the flooring out
16:00 And like magic, you can pull full sections out
16:10 Floor vents
17:15 Bigger pieces are much easier to clean up
18:00 Cut each section
18:55 Need a pry bar to get the nails out
20:18 In the corner securing the joists, want to do that with each
21:51 On outside edge you want to add 2×6 between the joists
22:50 Back after fastening support-the 2 bys gives the mobile home added strength
23:22 Placing the plywood and fastening it, want to center on the floor joists
24:16 Screw every 6″ along the edge
25:24 Want to put a 2 by under the edge of the plywood, secures your floor
26:20 Reason he runs across the floor rafters-that prevents humps in your floor
28:04 You want to stagger your plywood joists, again for strength
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Well, hopefully these next few minutes will be showing you a few things, make your project move along easier. Have a little more success. The first tip? As if you’re using the hammer, you want to use one that you’re familiar with, cuts down on how much you hit the wrong things, including your fingers, the nails for the framing , just like the screws, are going to be two and a half to three inches long. So you want to be careful again, not to hit your fingers as it hurts, and then the nails for the plywood is anywhere from an inch and a half to two inches long.
So that would hold down through the thickness of the plywood and into the wood below. If you have a comfortable position, might be able to take a pair of pliers and literally hold, instead of with your fingers, the pliers you could be hitting.
And if you miss the pliers, something that I suggest, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience, but anyway. There are some positions where you’re not going to be able to hold it very well for that and the wood.
Then there are also options such as air nailing this particular one is a stapler. But there are straight nails and they’re angled nails again. You want to use the same principle as the longer screws for the framing for two and a half inch to three inch screws for the framing on your air nails and it can be straight. And these are angled nails and the two inch inch and a half on the plywood, there’s a number of different brands. You can use any of those brands for nailing the plywood and nailing the the framing for the plywood.
Then finally, my favorite, which is screws. Again, we’re using the same length two and a half to three inch in this case is phillips head This is my favorite. three, two and a half to three inch for the framing, an inch and a half to two inch for the plywood.
The reason I like the screws is because they don’t move and you can pull the screws right through the wood, but the screws don’t move, whereas any of these can loosen up. And but they’re a very traditional thing and have been used for hundreds of years.
Now as to what kind of screw, gun or screws? Drill or such to use, I’ve used every kind right on up to big, big drills, and in this case, this is a battery powered drill. You can put the shaft in it.
This one has a keyless chuck, which means it doesn’t have to have tool to tighten it up. And this is a battery. I mean, the electric, drywall gun, which has a clutch in it I’ve used for years, hanging drywall, of course, that’s electricity.
But you can use a regular electric chucked screw gun. The problem with all the with both both of these that don’t have impact, which is my favorite, the impact. The impact does something that these won’t and this is what I’m going to show you have to do when you are pushing in.
with that screw. Can we zoom in here? You’re pushing in and probably pushing as hard as you can the torque of twisting that screw into that wood would literally lift out. It’ll start lifting up, it’ll be lifting up and getting on top.
And if you stay on it, you’ll end up stripping the screw unless you really push hard and keep that screw down in the bottom that tip down in the bottom of that screw it will lift up. Now, how do you deal with that?
Well, you’ve kind of what we call feather it in that is you take the trigger and you kind of push in and let off pushing it in, let off. When you let off, that tip falls down into that screw head again and gets tight.
You can push your feather in it and you’re pushing hard the whole time. So that’s the trick. With regular drills, you’re going to have to not count on being able to push it all the way in, but rather you may have to feather it in so that it falls back down in that screw, whereas the impact makes you look so much better, that impact is literally hammering in. And it’s not the same as the impact that’s on a drill. This is an impact driver. It literally pushes that tip in constantly so you don’t have to feather it in. So whenever you start getting this thing where start stripping.
You don’t need to keep trying to push it in, you need to back it out and put another one in because you’re stripping out the head of the screw and it’s only going to get worse as you go down.
So with these tips, hopefully, you can get through the project that I just showed you how on putting the word and the plywood down on your ruined floor on a mobile home. I wish you well, hope everything works out well for you.
And with all the practice that you get, you’ll get better and better at it and have more and more successes until next time. See you later! Hello. Today, we’re going to show you how to repair your floor that might have gotten wet or any other kind of damage and you want to replace it.
In this case, a tree came through the ceiling or replaced the roof. We replaced the drywall and painted that. We’ve removed the drywall where the drywall got damaged. But this is what we’re showing today is how to replace this swelled up flooring. first of all, there are a number of different ways to get started with a hole sometimes, and holes are already there if somebody stepped on it. But in this case, there is no hole. And you can take a drill.
You can drill a hole in the wall to get a sawzall along the edge. Now this can be you can also do is use a very simple thing like a hammer. And the idea is not to get so close to the drywall where you start hitting things.
You can get moved to sawzall to do that. So here you can see the nails where the rafter is. And we’re going to put a hole right here. Now, if you really don’t have a sawzall and you’re trying to get by on a budget, you can literally take out all that edge with a hammer.
And a chizle. Now, the problem with quality on that is it will a lot of times kind of angle the edge. But we’re still going to put supports into it. The next thing I’m going to do is use the sawzall again when you have the wall in place the sawzall is not going to want to try to get too close. So what we’re going to do is run that sawzall at an angle. Also, be careful that this sawzall is not going to be cutting into the electrical line or water line because then you’ve got another mess.
So what you do is try to keep your sawzall kind of shallow. And run it at an angle. Going over the joists you’ll have to raise it up. And that will be flattening out your sawzall, so you don’t cut all the way through this 2×6.
So see how it went over the top of that 2×6 without literally cutting through half of it with the length of the sawzall blade. And to demonstrate what you can also do with a hammer again, you got to keep off that wall especially when it’s been soft.
You want to get down to the two by six itself. They go to lengths of gluing it to the two by six, in addition to stapling and air nailing the particle board. Now, the particle board, The reason that it deteriorates so uniquely, it’s a water based glue.
When they put it together, it’s a bunch of chips of wood that are glued together when that water gets on it. That stuff swells up in the larger size, and there’s no way that the same material that’s on this floor will fit in the same space.
So it starts bowing up sometimes larger than this, and that’s why also that it starts crumbling. Now, a lot of times I’ve seen where people try to run three quarter plywood over top of this particle board.
And what it is is a temporary fix because what happens is underneath that board and plywood they put over top of this. This continues to deteriorate. Little by little, that stuff starts crumbling. It’s worse and worse. It never stops.
And eventually the plywood sitting on nails. So no linolium and no tile will ever be able to be secure so as not to make lines. In it and crack it and eventually it’ll fall through, too, because it’s not sitting properly.
So you need to take this particle board all the way down and put plywood on. That’s what we’re showing you today. OK. About 25 minutes has transpired, is just two of us are not a crew that comes in if you notice my hands are dirty, my clothes are dirty.
What we’ve done is clean up along the outside edge is the reason it’s got a distance between. Here’s what we’re fixing to do is tilt these pieces and I don’t need this scrapping against the wall, but look on these two bys, you’ll find that a lot of times there’s nails on the top of the two by sixes and there’s also glue and you’ll have to chisel it off.
You can use a screwdriver if you don’t have a chisel. I understand you are working on a budget. Sawzall works really well. Getting a clean edge. If it doesn’t again the chisel can be what cleans up here. What we’re going to do next is if you see every so often every two feet is a floor joist or you can tell where these floor joist are. A lot of times by the nails that are shown in the floor and what you do is you’re going to be cutting in between them.
And the reason is that way we can tilt it back and forth and work the nails and screws out. So what I’m going to do next is right where I’m at I’m gonna take this saw, which is set at about an inch and a half. Set it the width of the first of all, this particale board could be as much as an inch thick or more. Secondly, you’ll have lots of humps ups and downs of an inch and a half. You might not even be enough at inch and half. So we’re going to now take this saw and you’re going to hear some noise, and I’m gonna run it lengthwise.
And then I’ll show you what we do next. Now it was asked of me, what about water lines and electric lines? Most of that is in a sagging underbelly, which we’ve taken out. Now I recommend you take when you have water damage this caused by a lots of water.
I recommend you take out that plastic underbelly. And because any insulation because that underbelly literally holds water up I’ve had as much as a bathtub full of water and got myself really wet cutting it to get it out. What that date is, when the water is in that floor, it literally warps up, but the moisture warps up the floor
like you see it can. And can do the same on regular plywood. So get rid of the wet insulation and the water that’s standing in it in the plastic. There are some. Sometimes you can cut the plastic and water out and you can survive that way.
Next, comes the precarious part, hopefully you won’t see me fall through the floor, but it has happened. Stepping on one side. Mind you, my door is over there, so I’m going to start over there. I have to go through too much.
If you see how I tilted this floor up. I was able to pull up a whole section up in this case, not always that way. If you notice right here, it’s a floor vent and they’ll run the ductwork will run from one end of the house to the other half the others usually.
Sometimes it’s not aluminum. Sometimes it’s fiberglass, but usually has an aluminum pleniumin going up here or a little box made out of metal what I’ve done is pulled the staples, which you can do with a screwdriver or a chisel or a pair of pliers.
Pulled the staples out. And pulled these edges up. So, I don’t literally pull everything loose on purpose out of the ductwork and it’s you can still fix it, but it’s another journey.
What I want to do now is take and break this piece right here, so it doesn’t catch on that metal box itself. Then I’m going to go back over here and this is where a seam is they used to.
In this case, there’s lots of different ways to get there. Now, mind you, part of the reason that I like to use the big pieces to get them out when I carry them out in the larger pieces, I can it’s less mess to carry.
I mean, you do have to shove them and you have to pick up all this stuff eventually. So, you know the larger pieces, the better. What I’m going to do is again, like I did over there, I’m going to cut down the middle in between the floor joists and then we’re going to rock back and forth and loosen it up. So here we go. Now we’ve cut that board. And this particular one is nailed. So I have to use a pry-bar to help it. So here we go. I’ll start with one in so you don’t have to work so much and you just keep working your way.
Oh, by the way, I’m standing on a frame, which is about three feet from. You can use screwdrivers hammers to do the same thing. It’s just a little bit easier with a prybar of this size. And sometimes you can’t use this size.
It’s too crowded in a small room, like the closet we’ll be going to next. Over here in the corner, this is a two by six floor, and I’m going to put on top of the frame, which is right here and connect it to the joists here, and I’m usually an impact gun, which is available.
You’ll hear the chattering, what it does is it does is it constantly pushes a screw tipped down into that screw and it helps you stay in it. Now you still may have to feather it in from time to time. You can use nails.
You can use other nail guns. You can use other screws. You can use electric drills and put the tips in. But this is a phillips head tip with phillips head screws, and that’s about three inches and I’m going to go in angle.
That one in. There we go now, we’ve got to fill in between each one of these joists with the same screws toenailing them and screwing them which ever way you can use nails I just like screws because they don’t back out. OK.
All along the outside edge, we want to put two bys that can be two by six, eights, two bys tens but that’s awefull expensive. Two by Ten is. And I’m going to again fashion it with the fastening that I am using, and this is a three inch screw with an impact gun.
This gun has a shaft that allows you to be wobbly with your gun, and you can actually guide that screw in quite handy. And you want to be flush with the previous two by six, here so that you can have your plywood flush with the floor where well.
As you can tell, the last hour we fashioned all of these two bys again, I say they can be any size two by eights, two by sixes, two by four along the edge so that there is no way that this will give. Plus, it gives it added strength to the overall floor.
And to the mobile home whenever you move it or whatever. So now we’ve done it all the way round if you’ll pay a little bit. We’ve fastened it all the way around these two bys, so that we’re ready for plywood we’re doing now.
What we’re doing now, is put this plywood on and center it floor joists now, and then we’re gonna screw it off. And my goal is to put a screw every six inches along the edge. How’s that look over there?
It is riding on the edge and it’s on the two by up there. OK, so we can push it a little bit, and make it fit? Is that what you’re doing? No, don’t push the plywood just move a little bit on the floor joist. OK. What we’re going to do next is screw every six inches along the edge. And I definitely recommend screws because they don’t move a nail will pull out. But again, if you if your budget only allows for nails and that’s what you have, that’ll be fine.
Again, if I don’t have a screw gun like I do, it will be more difficult, but it will still be able to be accomplished. There’s. And the fact that I’ve been doing it for a little over 30 years makes it seem as though it’s easy, it’s just a little bit of time you can push the goal along every edge of this plywood is that we have a two by underneath it that way, that there is no movement for one piece of plywood. To the end, one person steps up on it and we tie together as we go. We don’t end up lines through the linolium slash tile, and it will not move as much.
Or virtually none, again makes it stronger. So the hold in place were gonna, put a couple screws and then we’re gonna put three inch screws to hold them even better. You can do the same with nails. You can do the same with a nail gun
I cannot stress how important it is that screws don’t move in case you’re wondering, the reason that I always run across the rafters and floor joists is because if you run with the floor joists, the the way that the board is made and laminated you’ll wind up with humps in between because the strength is running across so you’re laminated areas are going in this direction and the floor joists is going this way, that gives you that added strength whereas the the companies that make these a lot of times like this what’s called railroading, and they run with the floor joists that happen.
It happens a lot of times, even though it’s done that way at the factory you’ll end up in between because that strength is lost, not much strength in particle board. And that’s again, why I use plywood. The next step from here would be as we as you seen, we screwed off everything all the way around.
All the edges are all screwed. There’s nothing going on move. All of the screws are laid so that they know that if they go down, we’ll have to go over it one more time to check driving down, which you need to do.
Then if you’re going to put a tile, which in this case is what we’re going to do, is then you put floor leveler. It makes it like a really thick plastic-like consistency and you smooth out the edges transitions from very, very small.
So that way you won’t show much of a hump. And again, you notice the joints in here are never in the same place for one row to the other. Staggered, again you won’t see that the humps in the floor because the joints are staggered.
If you put them all in one place, it will be an obvious line, right straight to the roof. So what we do to stay away from putting the joints in the same place and you go and put floor level on this if you’re going to put tile, if you’re just put carpet, you’re ready to go.
When you put the carpet on, then you’re going to put, you know, trim, if you’re open edges like this one or a little bit, wide you can do is you put caulking in there or you can use spray foam, and spray foam it.
And then as it expands and it will expand you’re gonna wipe it down, keep it tight. Then whenever you have you put your floor covering one. Whether it be carpet or tile, you’ll be put in your trim, your floor trim or baseboard on.
So this is how you do your floor. Thank you for your time.
