Soundproofing your floor at home
Aug 2nd, 2008 | By admin | Category: how toSound proofing your floor at home can sometimes be your only solution if you want to live a peaceful life. We have noisy neighbours below us that seem to be unable to either watch TV or speak at a normal level. So we decided enough was enough and looked into various floor sound proofing solutions. As with anything that is of a specialist nature it’s going to be expensive.
Before we go into soundproofing your home lets talk about types of sound and its effects. Sound is generally measured in decibels which is a unit used to measure the strength of a signal or sound.
Below I have provided some details about how loud certain things are to give you a gauge when assessing the performance of certain sound reduction products.
dB types of noise
• 0dB Threshold of Audibility - Rustle of leaves
• 30dB Quiet conversation or in a quiet location in the country
• 45dB Typical office space. Ambience in the city at night
• 50dB Background noise in an office
• 60dB The sound of an average radio
• 70dB The sound of a car passing on the street
• 80dB An intercity train from a station platform/loud music in a home
• 90dB Pneumatic drill at 3 metes / sound of a truck passing on the street
• 100dB Jet plane taking off at 50 metes /sound of a rock band
• 115dB Limit of sound permitted in industry / Screaming baby
• 120dB Deafening
• 140dB Threshold of pain
• 60-130dB Dog Barking
In the home you are going to be concerned with two types of noise and its important to determine which one you need to reduce before you start looking for products.
AIRBORNE SOUND: Sound that reaches the point of interest by propagation through air. This is noise that is created by talking, music or the TV for example.
IMPACT SOUND: The sound produced by the collision of two solid objects. For example from footsteps, dropped objects, etc., on an interior surface (wall, floor, or ceiling) of a building.
So back to soundproofing your floor, our problem is airborne sound from our neighbours below; they play loud music and argue all the time. We decided to do some research and found out that it can be a very expensive business.
Basically the best way to sound proof a floor is to take up the floorboards and place acoustic mineral wool between the joists. This will provide a barrier between you and the noise below.
However, if you are not able to lift the floorboards up you can do what we did. We basically laid chip board on top of the floor and bought a product called Acoustilay. This we found to be best value for money whilst providing the best sound reduction qualities. Here is the link detailing information about the product, www.soundreduction.co.uk they have stockists around the country.
I recommend that when you are looking for a top of floor barrier or acoustic underlay you should take into consideration how many metres squared you will need. The cost of the material per metres squared and also does the price include VAT and delivery.
One tip, you should not have to really pay for acoustic tape which is expensive you can usually get away with normal duck tape. Other properties you should look for when buying your barrier underlay is the density per square metre. The heavier it is the better sound protection it will deliver. You also need to confirm if it is specifically made for airborne sound or impact noise.
Along with Acoustilay we did look at other products such as quiet floor underlay Quiet Floor and noise stop’s systems barrier shields but they were not with in our budget and after evaluating the performance, Acoustilay came out on top.
In addition to this and after a lot of research we bought an underlay with acoustic reduction properties called Cloud 9 cumulus, which although is more for impact noise does hold some airborne sound protection due to its thickness, density and weight. To finish it all off we bought a thick wool carpet and it seems to have worked and easily reduced the sound by half. If how ever this is not enough for you can buy a soundproofing membrane mat No Noise that you can place on top of the Acoustilay this is a dense material that can offer great sound reduction.
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