StopGap Floorboard Draught Excluder - Brown

This is an amazing product. Simple and does the job. I've got old pine boards with some huge gaps. Some gaps are smaller , 3mm but I bought the standard and it's worked perfectly for different size gaps. You simply push the plastic into the gap and it folds into a v shape, holding itself against the boards. I bought brown so it basically disappears like a shadow but it's clean and there's no draught. Perfect.

This stuff is great. So simple but does the job really well. Note that if the gaps between your floorboards are very uneven (e.g. if you've got years' worth of blobs of varnish down there) then you might need to get a knife out to straighten the gaps slightly, but the flexibility of this stuff means that the gaps don't need to be perfectly straight or of an even width - it will just squash or expand accordingly.

This is essentially a strip of plastic that has a fold down its middle so you can insert into the gaps of your floorboard. It does what it says - stops the draughts and dust from billowing up into the room. What I liked: very easy to install; you feel and notice the effects immediately. What I didn't like - It's horrendously expensive for what it is, and I'm sure you could find a similar strip of plastic make a v fold and not pay the extortionate price. It took three rolls for our sitting room which measures 20 sq m = 75 quid! I wouldn't mind paying if it weren't literally just a strip of plastic. Does it work well? That really depends on your floor. If your floor has a lot of movement the Stopgap will pop up and you will need to (depending on your tolerance for plastic sticking up from your floor) periodically push it back down. Make sure you've nailed down your floor - any loose boards will force it up as people walk on the boards. Mine are very well tamped down, but I've noticed it does still pop back up as all floorboards have some movement to them. Don't push too far down though, or it will go straight through to the crawl space. Does it look good? Initially, I hated the idea of gaps between the floorboards and was tempted to put in pine slivers as with another room in my house. But the floor guy we used suggested it. It does look pretty good - but this again comes down to prepping your floor! You need to make sure that the edges of the gaps are smooth. Previous owners had shoved a paper mache mix into the gaps and I'd cleaned most it off before floor guy came, though there were spots I missed. Initially when I put the stop gap in - it looked awful in the places I'd missed. So, I took a box cutter knife and cleaned the edges. MUCH BETTER. Clean edges means the Stop Gap looks invisible. Lumpy edges means you see it. How's it holding up? Like I said, you'll need to periodically push it down. A lot of stuff gets caught in them - as is it's job! But a bit hard to mop with water getting caught in it. All livable...I think it has a good name - Stop Gap - a rather simple, not perfect solution for the eternal problem of period floorboards!

Expensive but worth the investment; ground floor instantly less draughty/ warmer following instillation. Simple and easy to fit; it does take time to fit it around the joists, but it's worth it for the result. Live in a 3 bed house, did all the ground floor which took 6 hrs and used 3 full rolls.

If the gaps are very big, it falls down, and a Victorian wonky housed floor appears to vary. No good just blocking a few draughts, it appears to find its way underneath, and double the volume of bitterly cold air elsewhere where the gaps are large . Sure there's some science in that. Probably better to buy carpet and forgo the beauty of the boards.

Having wooden floors that have some gaps between the boards found this good to reduce the gaps and stop draughts caused from areas that are free of carpet/rugs.

I bought this at the same time as some "Bona Gap Master" filler to address gaps between floorboards downstairs. This stuff is effective and extremely quick and easy to get down, no question of that. Zero mess and almost no waste. However I didn't end up liking it as it still gives the impression of a gap - I have some long strips in the 5-7mm range where the gap master filler clearly removes the impression of the gap. The gap master filler takes a heck of a lot more effort, is messy and causes problems with family traffic as you can't have kids walking on it for 12-24h otherwise tramping brown stuff everywhere. In some circumstances, this stuff protruded marginally above the level of the floorboards as well which causes an annoying occasional rub, i.e. you can tell it's there, but that is more a function of my floor boards and joists perhaps. On the plus side, this stuff worked very well for the gap between floorboard and skirting board, for some reason i liked it better there if that makes sense.

Wow. What a difference! Installed in our living room and it made an immediate improvement in the temperature of the room. Ease to install. Recommend having a pair of tweezers (or a thin utensil) to help prod it down in tighter places. Our cats got a little overexcited about digging out the edges if they were sufficiently in! Blends right in.