Sawdust Resin Gap Filling
A resin, treacle like solution is mixed with fine sawdust from the edge sander to form a paste which is troweled into the gaps, left to dry and sanded off with a fine sandpaper to give a flush perfectly filled finish of similar colour to the floor itself.
Pros
It helps reduce drafts, it’s stainable. Aesthetically pleasing.
cons
it’s ridiculously priced at almost £50 inc VAT for 5kg (5 litres) enough to fill about 16m2 of 4-6mm gaps
It will make your whole house and maybe next doors smell of solvent (there is no non smelly resin).
It cracks & falls out almost always & then looks terrible.
and did i mention it gives you a headache…
Next up we have the incredible SLITHERS!! Or actually as they are really known Shivers, derived from the term “Shiver me timbers” (in best pirate voice) i call them wood fillets, basically reclaimed softwood strips cut in a wedge shape usually at the widest side 4-6mm , glued and wedged into gaps, left to set, then sanded flat with the rest of the floor.
Pros
Reduce drafts, look great, stain, tend to stay in quite well.
Cons
Tedious and time consuming to install, (usually charged at about 12per m2, going on southern rates)
Although they do stay in well, when glued because of the shape ie wedge, some areas of the fillet do not make much contact with the glue and either side of the board. With movement they are prone to ping out on maybe just one end, but once they ping out, there’s no fixing it,
When i come across this, i just pull the lot out, annoying af., also if gaps vary a lot you may find yourself only getting a few mm of the fillet in, then once sanded flat you have literally a splinter sitting in the gap.
Slithers, Shivers, fillets whatever you want to call them are not the remarkable solutions discovered deep in space by a certain contractor whos website i looked at recently, they are an ok solution.