Screw Indents

Vrooman

I am working on a house which has about a 1400 sqft open flat ceiling...The house was drywalled about 4 months ago and in the last two months, hundreds of screw indents have been showing up, kind of like the drywall is falling off the trusses.

The drywaller wont fix it and wont give us an explanation of what happened, the problem needed to be fixed so we started re-screwing and pushing up on the ceiling and screws started to pop everywhere, some where pushed out from the surface of the ceiling 1/4", now my question is what happened....could they have broke the paper on every single screw? possibly their gun was set up wrong?

So far we have popped about 95% of the screws they installed. What other situations could cause the screws to in-dent like that?

loneframer

It's possible that it was never pulled tight to the trusses to begin with. I actually prefer the sheets to be nailed on the perimeter and center nailed on every layout to set the sheet in the glue. then screwed off afterward. You already covered the likliest possibility.

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Vrooman

They used 1 1/4" screws everywhere, while code is 1 5/8" i believe if that matters

loneframer

They probably cheated and never glued to the rafters.

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Vrooman

The vapour barrier would make the glue useless, You only can glue to an interior wall...which they didnt.

mrp

Shorter fasteners make pops less likely. 5/8" penetration into the wood is code in many places, so it isn't uncommon to see 1-1/4" screws used to hang 5/8" drywall on ceilings.

BattleRidge

1 1/4 is code, never hung with anything different and I have worked with lots of rockers in my area. This just means they were pussies and didnt hold the rock tight against the ceiling when they screwed it. I hung this stuff called quietrock once and it did that, but its incredibly heavy and we couldnt hold it tight enough.

Darren@Partners

Or they nailed the perimeters and then waited a day or two to screw off the fields, allowing the fields to bag. And maybe had the gun set too deep. I'd never glue ceilings and code (IRC) is a 5/8" penetration meaning 1 1/4" would suffice even for 5/8" rock. I suspect they left those ceilings til last to screw off personally. And vapor barrier should not be installed on a ceiling, the moisture from house humidity will have nowhere to travel and the ceiling board will ultimately fail due to trapped moisture.

mrp

Re-reading your post, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're seeing. When you push up on the ceiling, are the actual heads of the screws poking out of the drywall? If so, then that's a classic nail pop. That could be from not holding the drywall tight to the ceiling when screwing it off, shrinkage of the framing after the drywall was hung, or a combination of both.

If, on the other hand, the heads of the original screws are not sticking out when you push on the ceiling then it sounds like they drove the screws too far, breaking the paper. This would show up as a dimple as the drywall falls down around the screw and a bulge as you push it back up.

It's also possible that they didn't drive the screws too far, but still damaged the paper enough to cause it to fail. (One guy had a bent shaft on his bit holder. There was enough runout that the screw threads destroyed the paper as the screws were driven.)

Whatever the cause, with 95% failure rate you're going to have a heck of a time fixing that on a smooth ceiling. There will be soft spots around the original screws where the paper and core are damaged. Those will likely come back to haunt you. Depending on where you are in the process, I'd consider putting a layer of 1/2" ceiling board over the 5/8" if at all feasible.

Muddauber

Vrooman,
You say the job was drywalled 4 months ago, Dec.- Jan.
Also, there is a vapor barrier on the ceiling.

What kind of heat was used for hanging and finishing?

If you were using propane or kerosene heaters, you will have excessive moisture in the house if not vented.

With the barrier on the ceiling, the board would absorb the moisture causing the screws to fail.

John1

How many actually "glue"?

elliot

Was the job rocked by Sheetrockers or possiblly by carpenters using cordless drill/drivers without those dimplers. I've noticed alot of guys using those drill drivers instead of the proper screw gun.

loneframer

The drywall contractor we use glues everything, I've taken down some of their boards for various reasons and have never found one without glue.The blobs all over the subfloor are usually a good indicator also.

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Sir Mixalot

1/2" drywall on 24"OC framing + humidity?

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neolitic

Manitoba in November, is it possible
that the joist were wet and frozen?

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Vrooman

Yes they would have been frozen, but the trusses were put up and roof shingled in the fall, so I would have thought the trusses were dried out by then..the vapour barrier was installed then drywall hung, insulation was blown in a few days after the board was hung.

An seamless vapour barrier is required by code here....from under the concrete slab in the basement, to the ceiling..every home is also required to have an HRV.

Moisture could have been a problem when boarding, I do not know what they heated the place with....

To try and re- explain the original problem...the finished ceiling(after paint), had dimples showing up where the screws were, but if you push up in that area, the dimple would turn into a screw pop and some of the screws were breaking right through the paint 1/4" beyond the surface.

Obviously the drywall was not pushed up tight on the trusses. ALSO...just found out the ceiling board is 1/2" SR drywall...and there is 16" of blown in fibreglass.

I am just hoping screwing it tight everywhere and skimming the ceiling will solve the problem. The guy is a friend of mine and we want to help him out since the drywallers wont. I stay away from drywall if at all possible.

We are just the trim carpenters on this job...not too sure if I even want to be involved in this!

Big Shoe

I always remove the popped screw and put new ones on both sides of the hole. Fill with durabond. Alot of fastest screwers I see tend to pop the screw in............thinking it was in tight. I started checking all screws before finishing by randomly pushing on the drywall throughout the house.

The last time we used glue on a house was 1979.

Vrooman

well the ceiling is screwed completely, pulled out all of their screws after we made them pop, then screwed on each side of the pop..the screws have been filled and we are going to apply a skim coat, wait about a week, prime and paint.

I will post how everything turns out and see if we have any problems in the next few months to come. its scary to think how many screws we had to put in, probably twice the amount they originally did because we had to double screw on every pop.

MarkQ

one or two things could be happening. Trusses could be lifting. Did you blow in attic after the DW was hung? The problem is the temp. differences between the top and bottom cords of the Trusses. The Top trusses takes on heat from the sun, and the bottom cord is insulated and stays cooler. The top cord expands and bows the bottom cord. some bottom cords bow in and some bow out. This results in the pulling the screws thru the rock. This is the biggest problem w/ trusses, big temp swing in the construction process. One other thing could be at play here. Is the pops loose, or is the rock secure and it lookes like the screw heads are just rised up from the surface just slightly? If so it maybe wet wood with the addition of glue. What happen here is the wood dries pulling the rock with it, but the screw will always stay in the same place. For ex: if you put a nail in a tree in ten years the tree will grow around the nail. Wood always dries around and away from the screw, and the board is pulled inward because it is glued. This process looks like a nail pop but its not. There is no industry term for this I call them nail messas. I notice this in walls more than lids. Wall studs are different wood, geneticly altered to grow fast, and take on and hold moisture just like a sponge. All this talk about not screwing the rock right is a good posibility, but if that were the case I would think you would have noticed after it was sanded. In my experiance truss lift and wet wood problems progess and can happen within a few weeks or up to a year. Hope this helps

Blue Point

Maybe they used too thick of an insullation or too high of a r-value and the insulation is pushing down on the sheetrock. I have come across this problem when remodelling a bathroom in a recently renovated home.