Underlay for laminate flooring: a quest

Haidee_Hammond

Hi all

I have been reading and looking around for flooring for our new house and I think we finally came to a conclusion (aka, for resilience purposes instead of wood we will go with laminate, balterio grande or quickstep impressive ultra).

I have been reading and I get the impression the underlay is equally important, but then none of the underlays I can find recommended are sold around and I can't find references for the ones I find. I will need underlay for both the ground floor (concrete underfloor, let's assume levelled) so I assume we need moisture barrier, and first floor (it's a timber frame house, so I expect timber) so we want a very high noise reduction.

We have considered both installing it ourselves and hiring someone (since we were warned against it), and the guy I asked seems to only use ONE underlay, of which I can't find much information online.

Any suggestions?

tom1ie

Doors and floors long mile road (if your near Dublin). I got a gold colored acoustic underlay that I used both upstairs and downstairs for under my laminate floor.
It was expensive but worth it as it changes the feel and sound of the laminate flooring to give it a more realistic solid sound and feel.

tom1ie

Here’s a link to something similar if not the same product, (can’t remember it was 6 years ago I put the floors down!)
http://www.irishflooring.ie/product_info.php?products_id=7905

tenbob1

What underlays have you found ? We are not based in Dublin, but I can find stockists for you for most products pretty easily.

Haidee_Hammond

tenbob1 wrote: »

What underlays have you found ? We are not based in Dublin, but I can find stockists for you for most products pretty easily.

Well I'm not dead set on anything, issue is what I find in the shops I don't know if it's good and what I find on articles as best, can't find it. I am getting the feeling that I want a 3/4mm (have to see how levelled are the floors) since I have read 5mm can lead to issues, dense, over 22 dB sound reduction, and moisture barrier (at least for the ground floor), I am not even sure if I want rubber, cork or foam, but almost everything I find is foam. (potentially foam downstairs because concrete subfloor and higher risk of water doing its thing, and cork upstairs because timber frame and a quite noise averse boyfriend )

Where are you based?

I put down a 12mm laminate recently and under it is a 3mm foil backed underlay (as it was going directly on a concrete floor).

Can't recall the price to be honest, as the receipt doesnt seem to price individual items, but i got it from RightPriceTiles and found the all-in price was good (included the floor, underlay, and some tiles and grout).


I didn't buy it, but i did see that woodies stocked an underlay that had packaging that was banging on about sound reduction, so maybe try them?

tenbob1

We are based in Co. Mayo.

As I have stated in many previous posts, not all underlays are made the same. If its a sound reduction underlay you are after it should be pretty easy to pick up a 23dB PU product pretty easily.

The underlay in Woodies is nuts expensive for what it is.

I found this guide very helpful: WRG guide to underlay.

I went for the SilentPlus 3mm as it had the best sound improvement value of them all at 23db (which was a better db than the 4mm underlays had).

PS: Don't forget to buy the floor joiners for each threshold and the metal ones for front and back door thresholds.

metricspaces

This site might be useful too https://soundstop.co.uk/soundproofing_floors.php

From what I've read you need to decide whether you want to stop airborne noise travelling through the floor (e.g. sound of TV from downstairs travelling up or vica-versa) or if you want to stop vibration\impact noise travelling down to rooms below (i.e. people walking on the floor upstairs).

I read in another thread too of a guy had noise problems and he suggested sealing every single hole in the floor with acoustic silicone sealant, for example where the radiator pipes come out of the floor. So that might be something to consider before you put down underlay.

Haidee_Hammond

metricspaces wrote: »

This site might be useful too https://soundstop.co.uk/soundproofing_floors.php

From what I've read you need to decide whether you want to stop airborne noise travelling through the floor (e.g. sound of TV from downstairs travelling up or vica-versa) or if you want to stop vibration\impact noise travelling down to rooms below (i.e. people walking on the floor upstairs).

I read in another thread too of a guy had noise problems and he suggested sealing every single hole in the floor with acoustic silicone sealant, for example where the radiator pipes come out of the floor. So that might be something to consider before you put down underlay.

Didn't realise that was a consideration, I imagine being a 2 stories house I want in one case sounds to not travel up and another sound to not travel down XD

Thanks a lot for the link!

metricspaces

Haidee_Hammond wrote: »

Didn't realise that was a consideration, I imagine being a 2 stories house I want in one case sounds to not travel up and another sound to not travel down XD

Thanks a lot for the link!

I am looking into this too and I think it's two things I'd want:

1) Stop airborne sound travelling up or down (e.g. TV noise from living room going into bedroom, Radio noise in bedroom going into living room)

2) Stop the vibration\impact noise of someone walking in the bedroom being heard in living room downstairs

It is (2) that I think most underlays will help with. Whereas (1) you need more specialised underlays.

Haidee_Hammond

Looks like I would never have enough space (considering tiles are already in) for the second kind.

Now I wanted to mention that I wrote to Irish Flooring since they seemed to stock higher specs underlay (which is what I was after) and Alan sent an amazingly detailed answer. They don't seem to have the cheaper prices (you also need to add VAT and shipping), but they have a good variety of good ones and they can help you decide, so just leaving that here