DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi! I have recently moved to an old house which had a major refurbishment in the 1970's. I need to access the pipes under a bedroom floor because of a leaking pipe, but access is difficult because the floor is nailed-down, tongue-and-groove chipboard. I could cut a hole in the chipboard and patch it up after, but I'd rather make the pipes easier to access in the future and was thinking to replace the chipboard with floorboards. There is a plasterboard dividing wall on top of this chipboard floor which I would like to leave in-place.

To put in floorboards, I expect the steps would be:
- Remove the skirting board
- At the dividing wall, cut as close as possible to the wall but leave the chipboard directly underneath.
- Lay the floorboards by nailing onto the existing joists.
- Redo skirting boards & any plastering.

I am not very experienced with DIY, so I'd just like to ask: is this a terrible idea? Is there something I might not be thinking of, like the type of joist under the chipboard? Is there some other type of floor which might be a better option?

Before this happened I was thinking of laying an engineered wood or laminate floor, but I wouldn't bother if it had floorboards, so material costs are not a huge issue. My dad is very experienced with DIY, so I'd have some help with the work.

Thanks very much for your input :)

Hi dtidy,
If you are going to use floorboards to provide easy access, you will need to use square edge boards and screw them down.
The boards will need to be wide and ex 30mm, otherwise you will get flexing with individual boards and the boards will need to be well seasoned or you will get large gaps between the boards when they dry out.
You could use 2nd hand boards but these get a bit thin with regularisation of the thickness and you will need to buy enough for matching of existing nail holes.
I assuming that you have floor joists that are at a maximum of 16" centres.
Regards S

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking to use second hand boards, but I've noticed that a stud wall is sitting between joists. Is there some kind of support I could add between joists so that I could do just one room at a time?

Hi dtidy,
Now that is a bit of a problem!
You will have to fit noggins directly under the stud wall fixed to the two orange joists.
If your drawing is broadly to scale you will not have enough access to do this from above. Your only option is to remove sections of the ceiling below.
You're probably best to access the leaking pipes from below and keep the floor with engineered wood or laminate added as per your first thoughts.
Regards S