How to Soundproof a Floor
Meeting Room Soundproofing
July 15, 2019If you’re looking to soundproof your apartment floors, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you have noisy downstairs neighbors, or you’re the noisy neighbor, this article will show you how to avoid noise complaints on either side. So, let’s talk about the reasons why someone might want to soundproof their floors first.
If you see yourself in any of those reasons, continue reading to see cheap and easy ways to soundproof an apartment floor without your building supervisor’s permission. You’ll also learn about the exact materials and specific products you might want to check out before starting your soundproofing projects at home.
WHY WOULD YOU NEED TO SOUNDPROOF THE FLOOR?
Well, there are many answers to this question. Namely, as we mentioned, you could have loud downstairs neighbors, or be loud yourself. You might even want to improve your apartment’s acoustics, for your own sake.
You could even have a pet you leave alone during the work day and don’t want to disturb the neighbors with the sounds of claws on wood. Basically, if you’ve got any of the following issues, you might want to consider soundproofing your floors.
- Preserving your own privacy
- You’ve gotten noise complaints
- Noisy downstairs neighbors
- Improving acoustics
If you’re looking to prevent TV noises, music, or your dog’s barking from traveling around your apartment complex, you’re dealing with airborne noise. As the name says, this is the type of sound that travels through the air. That means it probably goes through small holes, under your doors, or directly through the floors and ceilings.
The other type of noise you’re trying to prevent is structure-borne or impact sound. These types of sounds happen when force is applied to the walls, floors or ceilings. So, impact sounds are your footsteps, or kids throwing plastic bricks and dribbling balls on the floor. You can learn more about different types of noise here.
No matter what the source of the noise is, there are some quick and easy steps you can take that will make it at least a bit quieter. You probably know that noise pollution can mess with your productivity and mental health, as well as actually damage your hearing and increase your blood pressure. So, it’s best that you work on suppressing sounds that contribute to the noise pollution you’re already dealing with.
Soundproofing Your Floor Is Easier Than You Thin
Unless you’ve got a millennial living in your basement who has the sleeping habits of bat and likes to party at midnight, the necessity for sound proof flooring usually stems from unwanted vibrational noise that comes from the house itself rather than exterior noise. For instance, soundproofing material for floors tend to focus on reducing structural and vibration sound transmissions such as creaks, squeaks, rattles and odd noises sometimes attributed to a house “settling.”
Global Acoustic offers a variety of effective and affordable soundproof flooring products, including thermoplastic floor joist isolators specifically for improving your flooring assembly’s Sound Transmission and Impact Insulation Classes. Floor joist isolators decouple flooring from structural supports to reduce sound transmission, particularly lower frequency sounds that are difficult to control.
Another easy way to sound proof your flooring (and keep the peace in your home) is with our popular PROFLEX™ 90 underlayment designed for use under hardwood, stone and tile floors. PROFLEX™ 90 not only reduces intensity of foot fall noises but also voice, TV and stereo noise. In addition, you can use this special soundproofing material in areas where moisture is a concern.
Outperforming plastics and roofing membranes with regard to noise proofing and sound reduction, Impact Barrier QT provides some of the highest IIC rating improvements while offering excellent, anti-fracture crack bridging qualities. Considered by many of our customers as the perfect soundproof flooring product for hotels, high rises, condos, family homes, apartment and office buildings, Impact Barrier QT can be placed under marble, stone, ceramic tile, brick, carpet and laminate/hardwood/engineered wood.
If you have questions about how to soundproof floors, we have the answers you’ll be happy to hear.
Soundproofing a Floor
All flooring projects begin with a subfloor and can be complimented with a soundproofing material.
Flooring underlayments are used to soundproof a floor. It’s important to choose the right type of underlayment for the flooring type.
What type of floor are you soundproofing?
The two main floor construction types are timber joists and floorboards, or concrete floors. Concrete floors have a high level of mass. Concrete floors will block airborne sounds (conversation, television). Impact sound (footfall, moving furniture) will still through the floor to the room below. If your floor is timber joist and floorboard both impact and airborne sounds can be a problem.
How To Soundproof a Concrete Floor
Concrete floors carry a lot of mass so are extremely good on their own at soundproofing against airborne noise.
a man sits on a concrete floor while writing on some papers However they do transmit impact noise quite well, if you’ve ever lived under a concrete floor you may be familiar with the thud of your neighbour getting out of bed in the morning vibrating through the floor!
To soundproof a concrete floor you need to add an absorbent layer on top of the concrete to help deaden any impacts.
A simple combination of underlay and carpet works very well.
If needs be you can purchase acoustic underlay which is designed to be extra dense so that more vibrations are absorbed.
Unless you have a serious problem with impact sound then standard underlay and carpet combined with your concrete floor should be sufficient to effectively soundproof a concrete floor against impact sound.
