Sound Proofing Between Floors

Hawthorn_Pl

I am taking up the floorboards in my upstairs bedrooms and am replacing them with new red deal boards. At the moment things are quite noisy downstairs when somebody is walking around upstairs. I am hoping to try and eliminate alot of this noise by putting sound insulation in between the joists before putting down the new boards. What would people recommend? I have also heard that you can get special material to lay along the top of the joists before nailing down the new boards. Anyone have any experience of this or know what it is called?

Viking House

We have used strips of softboard in the past on top of the joists but the nails/screws still carry a certain amount of noise through.
Better to use a floating floor with softboard underlay.

ircoha

Hawthorn_Pl wrote:

I am taking up the floorboards in my upstairs bedrooms and am replacing them with new red deal boards. At the moment things are quite noisy downstairs when somebody is walking around upstairs. I am hoping to try and eliminate alot of this noise by putting sound insulation in between the joists before putting down the new boards. What would people recommend? I have also heard that you can get special material to lay along the top of the joists before nailing down the new boards. Anyone have any experience of this or know what it is called?

Sound is v difficult to manage and I would doubt the value of putting anything between the joists.

What VH has suggested re the floating floor is a good idea.

In passing, are u screwing or nailing the new boards?

Leaving all shoes downstairs worked wonders for us

AdrianR

I am taking up the floorboards in my upstairs bedrooms

Are you taking up the old boards because they are unsound or because they don't look great? If the old boards are sound then if it was me I'd put down a layer of acoustic insulation such as wonderlay and then but the new floor on top.

Endymion

ircoha wrote:

Sound is v difficult to manage and I would doubt the value of putting anything between the joists.

The hollow actually amplifies the sound, so putting material, any material, between the joists is a good idea. Of course the high the quality of insulating the better the sound proofing. For a complete sound proofing you would need a couple layers of different materials, each designed for specific frequency ranges