Should The Riser Be In Back Or On Top Of Tread - Assembly And Stair Squeaking Noise Problems

in this video i am going to do the best i can to make the most sense out of this one simple problem and that's whether or not the riser should go behind the tread like we have here or sit on top of the tread and feel free to share your opinions with us and i know some people have some strong opinions about this while others are like who cares just do it the way everybody else has been doing it and that's the end of it so let's go ahead and take a look at the first problem that we're going to run into and that will be a squeaking step if the tread is actually moving a little bit so it's going to move up and down up and down while you're walking up and down the stairs and applying pressure to the top of the tread now you're not going to have the problem if you walk up the center of the stairway and you're standing directly on top of a stringer or some type of structural support however you could have this problem if you have over spanned stringers and undersized treads and i used to run into this problem every once in a while when we would be using 5 8 plywood and maybe spacing the stringers 24 inches on center and yes i have over exaggerated the situation you're not going to get this much movement or i should say hopefully you're not going to get this much movement however if the tread just moves about an eighth of an inch and the back of it rubs up against the front of the riser you're going to get a little bit of noise and if this happens on each step while you walk up and down the stairway that could be annoying now one of the best ways to eliminate this from happening will be to attach some type of a fastener like a nail a screw or a staple and even use some type of an adhesive between the back of the tread and the front of the riser to eliminate any chance of movement now the reason why i'm making this video is right here because this method of construction allows you to attach some type of a fastener that can prevent the tread from moving at all however if we do it the other way to where we have the riser sitting on top of the tread we might not get any noise or as much noise because we're not going to have a board rubbing up against another board and my next statement will depend upon what type of building materials you're using and fasteners because there's a good chance you're not going to have as good of a connection this way as you would the other way to where you could attach a fastener from the back of the riser and i'm just simply basing that off of common sense you go ahead and step on this and it pulls down or just pulls down a little bit and then over time starts to pull a little bit further then you're now going to have a squeaking sound from each fastener that you have attached to the bottom of the tread and then ran it up into the riser so in my opinion this is a typical problem in construction where you solve one problem and that would be setting the riser on top of the tread to eliminate a squeak by preventing the tread that moves from rubbing up against the face of the riser or you end up with a situation where the riser is sitting on top of the tread and doesn't allow any noise to be heard from the movement by rubbing up against the front of the riser yet could create some type of a fastening problem if we were going to fasten it from the bottom underneath side of the tread instead of the back of the riser which brings me back to something that i should point out and i've pointed out in a lot of my other videos and that would be the fact to prevent any parts of the treads or risers from moving in the first place and that can be done by using different materials thicker materials or by attaching fasteners to the back of the riser that would go into the back of the tread or by somehow using a structurally strong adhesive or some type of fastening system that would prevent the back of the treads from moving in the first place and a problem like this can be solved by also adding additional structural supports and to bring this video to a close i'm going to go ahead and provide you with my opinion and that's going to be to securely fasten all of the framing components so that they are not going to move in the first place and if i had to choose between this method where the riser sits on top or the riser goes behind the tread i'm going to go ahead and stick with the tried and true method that i've been using for decades you

Channel: stairbuilding

Views: 39,664

Keywords: tread, riser, squeaking stairs, noisy, problems, ideas, solutions, assembly, adhesives, fastners, carpentry, education, building better

Id: aQ7H10LnHoU

Length: 5min 24sec (324 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021