New Floor

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 12:50 pm

Hey y'all-

I live and work out of a second story condominum, and am blessed by the fact that our place is well built, and that my downstairs neighbors are nearly deaf. In general, I don't worry at all about bothering them with the racket I make.

Currently, my control room is carpeted, wall to wall. For various reasons, acoustic and aesthetic, we are considering replacing the carpet with hardwood. My question is what, if any, effect will this have on transmission of sound from my room to our downstairs neighbors? We are considering adding wood floors to a couple of other rooms as well, so I am concerned not just with musical noise, but also footsteps, etc...

If there is going to be an increase in the noise they hear, what are my options for mitigation?

Thanks folks,

R

Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2003 2:54 pm

R,

Carpet and pad does help to keep sound out floor to floor because it is fairly absorbent (which is one of the reasons we don't prefer it for sound room floors).

I would suggest placing an isolation mat between the deck sheathing (or underlayment depending on your construction) and then install a floating wood floor rather than one attached to the structure.

Floating wood floors are very successfull and all major flooring manufacturers have installations approved for them.

here's an example of an STC 66 assembly - there are other manufacturers of similar products out there as well.

http://www.soundcontrol.com/float1.htm

Rod

This topic sponsored by: