StopGap Floorboard Draught Excluder - Brown

Product Information

StopGap was chosen once again by The Guardian as one of the best ways to protect your home from the cold. New: A brand-new, unused, unopened and undamaged item in original retail packaging (where packaging . This is the gold standard of gap-filling: wedge-shaped laths that you glue and hammer into gaps between boards, before sanding everything down to an even, gap-free finish. I was thinking of overboarding the floorboards still, either using 3mm hardboard (cheapest) or 6mm exterior grade ply. Clearly carpet will help but we are 3-4 months away from that so need something to get us through the winter!

Gaps in between floorboards create cold draughts which lead to chilly rooms, discomfort during the winter months and increased heating bills. You can find out by pulling up the corner of your carpet, or looking for air bricks on the outside of the property at the bottom of the walls – these will signify a suspended timber floor.Cat flap - admittedly, does let in a little bit of a draught, but I put a cushion against it when the cat was kipping, and the draught was STILL THERE.

The papier-mache didn’t look great though, so I’d only recommend this for draught-proofing in rooms you’re going to carpet. Take a look at our full image gallery to see how floorboards look after using DraughtEx floor gap fixer. This is another popular DIY option, but the sealant can fall through floorboard gaps if you don’t plug them first. These come in the form of tube-like rolls (such as DraughtEx) that are easily pushed into the spaces between floorboards, assuming that the correct and accurate diameters have previously been taken into account.DraughtEx is designed to expand and contract with the movement pattern of the timber and will therefore remain in place, retaining the insulation and preventing cold draughts. Surely draughts will only happen if there is a variable gap between the underside of the skirt and the new flooring, depending on how flat the floor you are laying on top on is.

These specific flooring fillers have been specially designed to give a long-lasting finish and with a good range of colours so you can match it to the shade or stain of your floors. Cold draughts created by the gaps between floorboards can lead to chilly and uncomfortable rooms and increased heating bills during the winter months. I’d go and choose your new carpet and underlay then also ask if they’ve any cheap roll ends they can throw over the underlay until you’re ready for the proper carpet.

Take an old credit card and go along the strip pressing it down until it makes contact with the joists (nails securing the boards to the joists show you the exact position). This is where you take small strips or slivers of reclaimed floorboards and hammer them gently into the gaps. The specially formulated colour “Shadow” has been designed to mimic the natural shadows created between floorboards and is almost invisible to the naked eye. I am probably too far the other way in that I hate removing anything because I don't want to make a mess or cause damage.

For ease of application and results the V-shaped plastic gap filler that springs apart to wins hands down, but for those on a tight budget or for those that have funny shaped gaps wider than 8mm then the papier-mâché solution is best.

personally I have never seen any insulation behind skirting as you say and I work in mostly period properties. They add a lot of character as space, but come with the possibility of gaps that can allow draughts up and into the room, especially if you are dealing with floorboards on an upper level of your house. There is a gap of about an inch between the floorboards and the brick walls and at the moment the cold air from under the floor is blasting through this gap. It is always a good idea to keep a large rug to lay down in the winter months for some extra insulation, particularly if the floorboards get cold underfoot, but floorboard draughts aren’t an issue that you have to live with.