Charlie: John in West Chase writes to us. He says, “I have a townhouse built in the ’70s Tom.” He says, “We’re remodeling the second floor bedroom and in one bedroom we noticed the shifting under the carpet. We removed the carpet and found it looked like concrete between the floor joists that had cracked. This is causing the carpet to dip down where the materials is crumbling.” What should he use to replace that?
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Tom: I don’t know how bad it is. If it’s not too bad you can use just a leveling compound, put it on top and it’ll kind of schmoots everything together and it’ll be fine. Put the carpet back down. If it’s crumbling up into almost dusty little particles and rocks and stuff, you literally have to chip it out and then repour a new mud bed underneath you.
Charlie: Mud bed? Mud? Okay.
Tom: It’s kind of like what we call pooky when we put it …
Charlie: Why would they have had that there?
Tom: A lot of places put concrete or mud on top of the wood to give it a more solid feel. You’ll see that a lot in old apartments and condos and things like that that were built in the ’60s and early ’70s.
Charlie: This was built in the early ’70s.
Tom: There you go.
Charlie: There it is.
Tom: You don’t do it anymore.
Charlie: Glad to hear that.