<b><b>Squeaky floors used to be an accepted part of the character of your home. Not any more. Customer demands mean that whatever material you choose for your floors, your kids should be able to sneak home late without having to remember to dodge the noisy floorboards. Allison Heller reports</b></b><br><b>Nowadays floors are expected to be creak-free, sufficiently insulated to meet new Part L and E Building Regulations for sound and thermal insulation, as well as environmentally sound and durable. And both the timber and concrete flooring sectors reckon they can provide all this, and more, with their increasing range of flooring systems on the market.</b><br><b>While concrete is an established solution for ground floors, new precasting technology is seeing a growth in the use of concrete for upper floors in single dwellings - a solution which is common in residential flat buildings.</b><br><b><b>creak-free</b></b><br> Meanwhile, timber flooring technology is progressing rapidly with new solutions such as fully engineered timber producing a creak-free product. Produced using machine stress graded timber in various forms bonded together with adhesives and/or laminated, engineered timber is both lighter and cheaper than solid pieces, and has the strong environmental draw card of &amp;“whole log&amp;” use, meaning less wood waste. But …