Q. The wood floors in my new home are driving me crazy. When I walk across them, they feel soft and bounce up and down. Some places actually squeak. The building inspector has indicated the floors do indeed meet the building code. What in the world can be done now to stiffen the floors so they feel more solid? What should have been done to prevent both problems?

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A. I can absolutely understand your frustration and disappointment. It is perfectly normal to have high expectations with respect to the final fit and finish of a product. When it comes to a new home, you'd expect the floors would be solid and squeak-free. Unfortunately, your expectations, and those of many homeowners, are in conflict with the building code. I wish it were not so, but it is reality.

I happen to have a high regard for the building code. It is a fantastic document in many respects. I count among many of my friends several retired and active building inspectors. But one thing I have learned in all of my years in the industry is that the building code is a set of minimum standards. A builder who works within the code is simply passing a series of tests each time an inspection is scheduled.

Think of the code inspection or test as an exam that is graded pass/fail. Just because a builder passes the test doesn't mean that he did an excellent job. The contract you signed with your builder may not require him to get an excellent score. You can make that happen by specifying better materials and installation methods that exceed code requirements.

The building code has a detailed section dealing with wood floor design. It calls out maximum distances that floor joists can span for different-size lumber set at different spacings. What's more, it indirectly refers to lumber grade and species. Different species and grades of lumber have a wide range of strength characteristics for identically sized pieces of lumber. A 2-by-8 made from dense select Douglas fir larch will perform quite differently than, say, an identical piece of Ponderosa pine. The floor joists permitted by code allow safe floors to be built that are soft and spongy. But most people want solid and safe floors.

Taking the bounce out of the floors will not be easy. There are many ways it can be done, but it will require significant modifications. You or your builder will need to consult with a structural engineer who has extensive residential experience with wood floor systems. To ensure that you will be satisfied, ask the engineer for a few references. Kenneth phelps sally face. Call the homeowners and ask them if the engineer's solution produced floors that were sound and stiff.

The secondary squeaking problem is more of a nuisance than anything. The squeaks can almost always be traced to nails driven through the subflooring into the floor joists. For any number of reasons, the nails may have withdrawn slightly, or the subfloor was never fastened tightly to the joists. As you walk across the floor, your weight causes the subfloor to slide up and down the nail shafts. This slight movement produces the agonizing squeak.

If your finished flooring surface is carpeting, you can solve the problem by driving screws through the subfloor into the floor joists. To prevent the carpet fibers from pulling, make a precise surgical slit in the carpet backing before you drive each screw. Squeaks in floors covered with tile, hardwood, sheet vinyl laminate, etc., are almost impossible to fix without removing the finished floor or parts of it.

These problems could have been avoided in the planning and construction phase. A seasoned architect or builder might have specified a floor joist package that would have produced the firmness you wanted. If you had discovered the spongy feel during a walk-through just after the framing was complete, simple, low-cost engineering solutions could have been used. The squeaks could have been totally prevented if the builder had installed coarse-threaded screws through the subfloor into the floor joists just before the finish flooring was installed.

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Visit Tim Carter's Web site, www.askthebuilder.com.