Squeaking floors! Arrggh, you've just made the largest purchase of your life and the floors squeak. Your builder may help but only if you are lucky enough to have purchased new. How could this have been avoided? Can it be fixed?

Sorry, conventional floors joists are solid sawn lumber. As a new house is heated, the wood products within the home start to dry out. To avoid severe shrinkage, a master builder will use kiln-dried joists. Even these "dried" joists can have up to 19% moisture content. A typical 2x10 will be 9-1/4" at installation. Even a few months after installation, shrinkage can decrease the depth of the floor to 9".

Unfortunately all 2x10 joists are not created equally. Crowns, cupping and depth can vary significantly throughout joists from the same lift or bundle. With joists shrinking at different rates, these problems lead to greater obstacles as repairs and call backs cut into your enjoyment of your new home. Squeaking floors are the plague of all conventional builders and cause anxiety for many new home owners.

Traditional I-Joist construction has always been a labor intensive and expensive upgrade for residential home builders. New products and installation methods lead to higher costs. Nascor Joists represent the next generation of engineered wood products. Using our patented "Ultimate Web" O.S.B. board and 2x3 Kiln dried spruce, we have assembled an Pre-Engineered Floor Joist System alternative that offers many advantages.

Nascor Joists are manufactured at an even 9-1/2" throughout each joist. There are no crowns or twisting due to our assembly procedures and the quality of components that we utilize. This dimensional consistency creates floor systems that are uniform in strength and will not create floor problems requiring service work after the sale.

The greatest feature of Nascor joists must be the simplicity of their use. With vertical chords, the joists remains a familiar 1- 1/2" wide. Special expensive hangers and hardware are unnecessary. Conventional 2x4 sill plates allow Nascor Joists the ability to be used as rim without going to blocking or an alternative rim product. Double and triple joists for headers and beams easily nail together without the obligation of filling in between with solid wood or plywood.

Finally Nascor joists are suited to the use of bridging. Again the vertical chord allows conventional 2x2 cross bridging to be incorporated into the floor system. The bridging illustrates Nascor's unique ability to create "load sharing" throughout so that the whole floor actually works as a system. This is an important feature other "I" joists cannot promote. Cross bridging is unable to be physically applied to their chords without splitting while blocking is an expensive alternative. The"Pre-Engineered" label indicates that the performance result of the finished product is up to the specifier/floor designer. The Nascor differentiation occurs when price is added as a variable.

Price and performance are the two main yardsticks to which the products must be measured. The spans and loads that our products encompass ensure that the floors we provide will be distinct in both categories. Keep in mind that Nascor joists are 20% stronger than their conventional counterparts.

Nascor joists have been evaluated and certified by several qualification agencies including C.C.M.C. in Canada and I.C.B.O. , B.O.C.A. and S.B.C.C.I in the United States. We are subject to inspection provided by Warnock Hersey Professional Services in addition to annual re-qualification and quality audits.

Unlike other I-Joist alternatives whose main focus is to obtain longer spans than are possible using solid sawn lumber joists, Nascor products are specifically manufactured to cater to the conventional housing market; we provide a quality product that is priced aggressively against conventional floor systems (2x10, 2x12).

This short summary cannot possibly cover the multitude of issues that involve joists, floors and today's exciting building environment. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce this unique new product and please feel free to inquire about the Nascor Joist floor systems directly with myself at chris@nascor.ca