Draught proof skirting boards

spannerzone

Evening all, one of my rooms has had the skirting boards fitted about 1.5cm above the floorboards, this is a bedroom above a garage and the room gets quite draughty and cold. Quite a draught blows between skirting and floor, I'd like to seal it up.

I've searched online and seen various solutions including inserting a foam strip then sealing with caulking or similar. Does anyone recommend this approach (inserting the foam strip should allow for gap variations which my slighty uneven floor suffers from and the caulking finishing the seal off.

I'd like to make it not too permanent should the floor boards need to come up for reapairs etc.

Thanks for any suggestions.

googler

Take the skirting off and fit it lower down?

One and a half centimetres?

Seal the edges of the ceiling in the garage, rather than up above?

SailorSam

When i was sealing below draughty skirting, i folded old newspaper over and over into strips and kept forcing it into the gap, then smoothed off with pollifilla type stuff.

tony6403

You could tack on a timber or mdf bead/moulding - different profiles available . Example 20mm x 20mm.

imaginarynumber

Are the floors over boarded with ply or hardwood and then carpeted?

If so, and the gap is invisible you can get minimal expanding foam. Fill the gaps with it and then trim away the excess with a Stanley knife (once dry). Run a strip of paper on top of the floor under the skirting though. The excess will be trimmed away as you remove the excess foam. The paper will prevent the foam from sticking to the floorboards, thus enabling them to be lifted with greater ease if required.

If the floor is not carpeted then use the above technique but cut slightly more of the foam away and fill with Red Devil OneTime filler. It is very easy to sand flush and more flexible than the rubbish PolyFiller-type powder fillers. The only caveat is that the filler/foam combo will be much softer than the wood but 15mm should be too low to worry about hoover knocks.

Mind you, none of the above will help with air coming up through the floor board gaps. You will need to fill/cover those as well

spannerzone

Thanks for the suggestions,

I don't want to have to refit the skirting if I can avoid due to making good (not great plaster so trying to avoid having remedial work)

The 1.5cm gap is from chipboard floor to skirting, no carpet in place at the mo so ideal time to make any mess. Draught seems to come from the cavity, the "builders" left small gaps where the joists go into the walls and so wind blows through cavity, through gaps and up the skirting. Had considered filling all gaps where joists sit in the wall but can't easily lift all chipboard flooring to access all gaps in the wall/joists.

I did think about expanding foam, cutting off excessive would be easy and making blend in shouldn't be too hard althoug I did wonder if it would go a bit rigid over time compared to silicon....but I guess it'll paint over better than silicon ever would.

Gaps in floorboards themselves is pretty minimal as it's (nasty) chipboard panels and the underlay and carpet should help there.

Anyway, I think I'll try some foam on a section and see how that goes. thanks once again.