what is better - nails or screws to use for a squeaky old parquet hard wood floor?

if so which type of nail or screw since they seem to grab and squeez when installed by hand much stronger than staples with a gun

we appreciate any help that you can give, thanks in advance

How many sq. feet you talking about. There are screws called squeeek-no-more that will break off just below the surface to fix squeaks. It's best to hit a floor joist but they do work fairly well between joist.

If we're talking about a thin parquet floor chances are it will not work because the small fingers will probably split when nailed.

I agree, reglue them.

we have a historic apartment building with several rooms several hundred sq ft each that have either squeeky spots or several loose pieces of parquet plus some loose strip borders of beautiful quarter son white oak

http://www.mcfeelys.com/product/SNM-332 ... w25-Screws

this link for break away screws was recommended as being better that any kind of screws or twist flooring NAILS weather we catch a joist or not

I guess if we are splitting the wood all we can use is small finished nails or whatever the parquet can tolerate

****Our big question is if a piece of parquet is loose but still in place is it worth pulling it up and risking further splitting in order to get glue onto the old mesh underneath

Also what is the best long term GLUE to use in holding the parquet down or on adding ply wood patches between the joist underneath****

thank you all for your posts

OK, to better be able to help you, we need to know more about your floors. I suspect, but could be wrong, that your floors are the thinner, 5/16" floors that were very popular throughout the first part of the 20th century, especially with intricate inlays, parquetry and feature strips. I've seen many in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and the surrounding bay area. Now if your floors are of the thinner 5/16" type, do NOT drive screws into the boards. They will split. The proper restorative approach is to refasten larger, strip type boards with 1" hardwood flooring brads. These have a larger head than your typical #3 finish nail plus a thicker shaft. You will need to pre-drill to avoid splitting the delicate wood. And split easily it will. If your parquet is comprised of some very small pieces of wood, those should be glued back into place. The original type of adhesive used would NOT be appropriate because it was designed to swell those pieces as it was often water-based. So a solvent based wood glue should be used. I think in this case, a small dab of Liquid Nails would be sufficient. Avoid getting it on the surface of the flooring. Now, IF your floors are the thicker, 3/4" variety, you could screw those boards down if you wanted to. I would pre-drill to avoid splitting. Fixing noising subfloors is different than fixing loose flooring. If you can get to them from underneath, try driving thin, wood shims between the joists and subfloor boards to tighten things up. There is also a device called a "Squeakender", http://www.squeakender.com/
that will fix noisy subfloors from below