Sealing old hardwood floors

We have bugs from our attached neighbors. We have sealed every last thing in our home except the floors. It’s not reasonable to put wood putty in all of these tiny cracks. We refinished the floors w/ a water based stain, but would poly finish fill in the little gaps in the floor (we did wood putty the large cracks)… I don’t know what to do!

returnrestoration

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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returnrestoration | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Good to know. Ours used water based stain and it hasn’t held up well. May have to redo the floors and will consider poly this time.

NeoGrec | 4 years and 4 months ago

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When our pine floors were sanded and refinished, the flooring contractor used a mix of sawdust and polyurethane to fill the gaps — since these boards were not tongue and groove, the gaps were pretty wide in some cases. Anyway, it looks good and has held up for 20 years now. Not sure if it would work to block critters but it’s a technique most flooring contractors use so I guess you could ask.

returnrestoration | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Yes. We have those. We have the issue where the roaches live next door and come to visit us. 🙁

cate | 4 years and 4 months ago

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The one thing that has worked for us has been using those roach baits that “kill roaches in their nests.” Sometimes the baits need to be renewed every three months. Obviously, it’s also important to remove sources of water, food, seal cracks, etc., as much as you can.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Hard things mixed with things that move fail. Hard finishes, glues and fillers. They lose their tenacity when the wood moves either through stuctural movement or expansion and contraction.

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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That probably work’s better than t HT e oakum topped with wood filler I tried, which r failed pretty quickly.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago

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bob, i have seen oakum in the hardware but never thought about it.. i have been contacting the men who i watched work when i was a child, they are old now and we are losing some of them – and one was a boat builder and i was asking him about oakum. he told me they made it with old rope and tar.

in so far as closing gaps in floors, the oakum is good as it is soft and moves. but to use these fillers, they are hard and crack out. there is a way to do it with wood: cut thin strips and put a soft glue in the void and tap them in BEFORE sanding. no one will see the repair after it is sanded. not what the op needs to hear though.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Op, i am out of thoughts on this and do not know enough about brick and mortar and floor joist pockets to make a suggestion. I can say that if this were my house i would be reading a lot. Then, if i thought they were coming in where the joist pockets are, i would be trying to acces them by pulling molding and either pulling a strip of finish floor or drilling holes and spraying something in there to try to seal the access point. But i would not consider something like that unless you can find out where they are getting in, for certain. Guys like me learned a lot by making a lot of mistakes like taking a guess at a bug access point.

Bugs are like leaks. They enter one place and emerge 30 feet away. The termites i mention above remained hidden in the floor underlay as they crossed an entire kitchen.

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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IIRC he told me that oakum was used to pack the hubs of cast iron pipes before soldering.

returnrestoration | 4 years and 4 months ago

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doorsbythetinkerswagon – we are attached on one side and there is no doubt the bugs are coming to our place bc they’ve run out of room next door where there is a major infestation. I am fastidiously clean and we use IGR, high-quality bates, diatomaceous earth, replaced all the molding to fill gaps, etc. Our exterminators tell us they can’t find a single infestation in our home, rather the bugs come to our place to visit and then die. We are desperate to seal our place from the infestation next door. This is the last effort before we sell.

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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No Steve. My late father-in-law was a plumber and he gave it to me.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Bob, did you make your own oakum? Boat builders used to use that and made it them selves.

andriywww1990 | 4 years and 4 months ago

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The bugs flee the neighbors when the neighbors exterminate. Or if what you are feeding them is better. When this happen to me before i was married and had a son, i used to get commercial insecticde and go to town. Doing things like that has gone the way of riding motorcycles without helmets and playing with the mercury from broken thermometers.

Even if i thought the bugs were coming into the building near the floor, i doubt sealing the gaps in between the finish floor would stop this. I did once lift a finish floor that had an underlay over the original pine floor or pine sub floor and the bugs in this case were termites that only ate through he underlay. Had they chosen to work on the sub floor or finish floor, sealing the gaps might not have stopped them.

Poly will not fill the cracks. It is not thick enough. I suppose if you put many coats down it might begin to close them, but too many coats of poly is not a good thing as it will chip and crack. I nterior poly is hard. The poly also does not seem to seep under the finish floor where it might prove a barrier with the sub floor. Its not a gap filler.

JohnHancock | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Unless you know for sure where they enter the house it’s hard to seal . They may appear in a different place than where they enter. Could be a joist, could be through the basement or walls, behind baseboards.
If they’re ants you could use the little boxes

returnrestoration | 4 years and 4 months ago

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Yes, the wood putty mostly fell out!

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago

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I think that anything you use to seal the floor cracks will fail pretty quickly as the floor boards expand and contract. I stuffed oakum into the cracks of the sub-floor in my kitchen and applied wood filler over that prior to sanding and refinishing. It lasted for a year or so.