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Hollow floor sound insulation

  • 10-10-2006 3:45pm
    #1
    Gwynston
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 919 ✭✭✭


    All the floors upstairs in our house are hollow. If I was ever building a house, I would definitely fit solid concrete floors, as all the creaking floorboards are annoying, but mostly we find that they are very poor at blocking out noise.

    Hollow interior walls upstairs are bad enough, but even more noise seems to come through the floors from downstairs. Our toddler's room is right above the kitchen and the baby's is right above the lounge, and noise from the TV in either room is enough to wake them up :(

    Is there any way to sound-insulate hollow floors? I guess carpets would help, but of course, wooden floors are the must have thing these days :p (and besides, carpets are incredibly impracticle when you have sick kids throwing up everywhere :eek: )

    Would any other solution involve ripping up the floorboards?


Comments

  • #2
    tomoose
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2 ✭tomoose


    Hi, there are two types of noise Flanking and Impact. Impact are noises caused by people walking on floors etc. Flanking is what you are experiencing, TV etc.

    in theory, Concrete floors have the mass to be good sound insulators but in practice gaps occurr in the grouting between slabs and between the load bearing walls and slabs. this allows noise to rise upstairs. You need to seal the gaps where the sound is getting through. there is no easy way as far as i know.

    Depending on your ground floor ceiling, You may be able to remove a false ceiling and put expaning foam around the edges and where the slabs meet. if it's a plastered ceiling direct to slab your next best bet might be to lay sound aborbing mats on the 1st floor underneath you wood floor! this is obviously hassle but Check out http://www.soundreduction.co.uk/ if your interested. they come highly rated.

    hollow interior walls, i presume you're talking about plasterboard without insulation. If you decide to lift your floors then why not remove on side of the boards (landing side is easiest), fill with insulation and replace with fermacell (www.fermacell.co.uk) boards. they are far superior to plasterboard in terms of strength and as a sound barrier and are a DIY job for a handy person.

    hope this info helps. sorry if i couldnt give a quick fix.


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