Floor fitters will be all too familiar with the curse of squeaky floorboards. Often the culprit is the fasteners; nails working loose over time, leading to callbacks.
While it’s well known that screws provide a tighter grip power by pulling the boards together, fitting 6mm plywood to underlay has long presented a dilemma. The conventional 25mm timber screws used to fasten flooring carry a risk of damaging underfloor electrical cables or puncturing water pipes, with potentially dangerous and costly consequences, however the alternative use of 19mm nails can cause the plywood subfloor to lift from the floorboards,
Simpson Strong-Tie has developed a solution to the problem, which enables floor fitters to opt for the superior holding power of screws now with the collated MTHZ19E underlayment screw.
Designed for the Quik Drive auto-feed screw system, the MTHZ19E allows secure underlayment to subfloor installations, with a sharp point for fast start and a trim head for a neat finish. This shorter length alternative to traditional flooring screws prevents the tip from protruding through the floor boards when fixing 6mm plywood, making it a safer way to fix 6mm plywood to subfloors.
The MTHZ19E can be used to fix to timber joists, or to fix to steel up to 0.9mm thick – for example in the installation of computer flooring, and can be easily removed and reapplied if access required to pipework at a later date. Nailed floorboards are notoriously difficult to remove intact.
While nail guns traditionally provide speed of fastening, they can produce inaccurate results and an inconsistent finish. The Quik Drive system provides a neat finish, with a flush consistent counter sink. And its ergonomic upright installation option will protect your knees and back, with no need to bend or crouch.
Quik Drive features a square drive for improved connection between bit and screw ensuring smoother drive. Nibs under the screw head help countersink into plywood giving a flush finish preventing floor coverings from settling in countersink recesses, and the intricate high low thread has been designed for stronger grip in timber and help prevent floor squeaks.
“In a competitive market client satisfaction is key to gaining repeat business. We all know that nailing is quicker however, I think this short term gain can be costly in the long run” explains Simpson Strong-Tie National Fasteners Sales Manager Natalie Dixon.
“Our flooring clients have told us many times over the years that a shorter collated screw is desperately needed and certainly preferable. I have been told this issue with snagging a water pipe may not be initially visible. It can leak for days or months or even more causing substantial damage and costs in leak detection. Certainly now avoidable. Penetrating an electrical service pipe could be life threatening. Suddenly, squeaky floorboards may be the least of concern!
“So how do sub-contractors justify the time and slightly extra cost of a screw fixing when it is often the subby that is working on the tightest of margins with little room for error? We understand this is vital to our customers.
“Other collated systems can have up to 10% of the screws in a strip fail. It’s costly, fiddly and an interruption to getting the job done and moving on to the next. Our tests showed that Quik Drive and the MTHZ19E screw had very few (if any), failed screws. Much less than one screw in 50 in fact.”
The MTHZ19E screws are collated on flat tape, which is different to the usual Quik Drive collation, so there is also a brand new QDBPC19EF Quik Drive 19mm flooring screw attachment available to run the screw through; precision-engineered and is manufactured to the highest standards for guaranteed quality, performance and reliability.
