Sound insulation between floors?
14 years ago
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Ready to have a nervous breakdown!
Comments (7)Um, now who's being the noisy neighbor? She's scaring your children by slamming things downstairs. Did you mention that? I'm w/ moonshadow, don't worry about her plates anymore. Now do not EVER bring up your kids, and the floors, and the noise, with her again. I live in an apt. bldg w/ thinnish floors (thick walls, thinnish floors). I hear my downstair's neighbors music from time to time--not loud, but I can tell it's there. I can hear the floor creak when my neighbor walks. if she puts together furniture, it's loud. But it doesn't impinge on my life, BECAUSE I IGNORE IT. it doesn't even register--you could ask me 1/2 hour later if I heard the music, and I'll tell you no. I heard it; I just didn't remember it. But-- I can't ignore it if someone talks about it. I hate when my dad comes to visit, bcs he's always commenting, "Oh, someone's using the elevator" (it opens into the apt., so you hear it faintly when it goes past). "Oh, your neighbor's walking around." So then when he TALKS about it, I notice the noise suddenly. And remember it. I get really crabb with him. I've even said to him, "You are not to mention that noise--you must not talk about it. My neighbors and I live in peace by agreeing not to notice, and I can't do that with you commenting all the time!" And on the same lines, what you've done is train yourself and your neighbor to only talk about noise--which means you both notice it. So stop. Never talk about noise w/ her again. if she brings it up, change the subject as fast as you can. Talk about the weather. Or flat-out say, "I find that it's easier to cope with the noise of the people who live around me if I just don't dwell on it. So I hate to talk about it. See you!" Right now your relationship w/ her is ONLY about noise. It needs to be less about that and more about the weather and which grocery stores has the best prices on chicken. You're a considerate person; your kids will never jump repeatedly over her head for hours on end. So if they jump 3x before you can stop them, she can deal. In a way, this is good, this last incident w/ her. Her scaring your child by slamming so much is YOUR out. At least your noise isn't hostile and frightening, and it doesn't happen for a long period of time. And a biggie here--it wasn't deliberately being created by a grownup. If your kids jump off the sofa while playing pirate, before you catch them, they're not intentionally making noise for the purpose of making noise, and neither are you. But she WAS!! Relax now. Just live. Stop them from running, don't let them jump off the sofa, and don't worry about it....See MoreSound insulation for upstairs wood flooring?
Comments (4)Oh, aside from the QT product that sounded interesting, but is somewhat thick (and could make nailing the wood floor down an issue), there's another much thinner product I saw called Sound Solutions which is made by Healthier Choice. Anyone with experience with either of these? Floor guy would need to glue the floor if I used this, not nail down (nails going through the Sound Solution padding would negate its benefits supposedly). This post was edited by duchamp on Thu, Oct 2, 14 at 9:40...See MoreSound proof between floors, new construction
Comments (31)Let's actually set this right. There are NOT three different methods of sound transmission, that is either way over-simplified or over-complicated, depending on the view that you want to take. Building designers have created a checklist to deal with building design and sound transmission. But that is because building designers have enough stuff to deal with without getting into the physics of mechanical waves when designing a building. There is exactly one method of sound transmission in buildings, on earth, in space, etc. Sound is a mechanical wave, or energy that travels through matter by disturbing it. More specifically even, it is the displacement of matter from its equilibrium position and that displacement as well as the rebounding of material is what moves sound through all matter, including air and walls, it is also the lack of matter to disturb that stops sound from moving through outer space. Sound is easy to understand as work, as sound encounters various forms of matter it expends effort to move through the material, even air, that is why decibels are lessened over distance. There are really only two ways to reduce sound, require more work and convert the work (technically there are three, but locate your basement in outer space seems a bit extreme). More mass means sound has to work harder to move the material, not unlike throwing a boulder compared to throwing a pebble. So one simple way to reduce sound transmission is to add more mass. The other is to convert sound to other forms of energy, usually heat energy. This is what resilient materials such as rubber and cork do. Think hitting someone with a bat versus hitting someone with a foam pole. ---------- Now all of this may seem immaterial to the discussion at hand but it really isn't. Building designers, especially when designing commercial buildings, have broken sound transmission into three very broad categories that they need to address in the design of a building. However, not every situation requires considering those things as they are presented, nor are those three things adequate in other situations. The final, and really more important point for homeowners, is the cost of effective design versus the cost of effective treatment. No one who actually works in theater installation and design really spends their day looking after these "three sound transmission characteristics" of building design. And no one creating sound isolation booths for recording studios would think addressing those three things are remotely adequate. I have both a home theater and a sound isolation booth in my house. There are thousands of installers, and hundreds of home theater and listening room designers who all use the same four steps for sound proofing: (1) sealing, (2) adding mass, (3) decoupling, and (4) dampening (note: that dampening is often separated into dampening and absorbing for ease of understanding). Any approach using these four steps, even in a cost effective manner, will adequately address sound transmission for most needs. Just to be clear it absolutely deals with airborne, flanking and impact transmission, it is well detailed in the material I directed the OP to. So any assertion that no one has dealt with that, is absolutely wrong. If you are building a sound isolation booth for a home recording studio, this is a good start, but by no means complete. However, you are going to have to get into specific attenuation at that point, at which time I would advise visiting the gearslutz.com or SoundonSound.com sites to get more information....See MoreSound dampening between floors
Comments (12)Retrograde sound deadening is very expensive. In fact it is one of the MOST expensive projects you can undertake that does NOT change the look of your home - at all! If this were to be done properly (at time of build) then the architect (yah...the Top Gal on the Top Floor!) would have specified: 1.5" subfloors on the main floor + 1/2" cork underlay between the plywood sheets. The Drop Down Acoustic Ceiling (reducing ceiling height by 14"...yep....1ft 2" less ceiling height) with isolation clips/channels. A 5/8" acoustic drywall (roughly 3x the regular price) would have been used. The joists would have been spray foam acoustic insulation between them. The pot lights would have been traded for TRADITIONAL lighting options (never cut a hole in your acoustic barrier...it's like drilling a hole in boat below the water line....it never works out well). The air duct returns would have had acoustic wrapping and would have been isolated from other metal around them. The plumbing pipes would also receive acoustic wrapping because anything with metal in it is like a 'telephone wire'...because phone wires are METAL WIRES...yah...funny that. As for wall to wall carpet padding, you work with the THICKEST, most expensive pad available that is allowed to be used with the carpet you are purchasing. That means going to a carpet show room...not Home Depot. Your carpet experts will have dealt with this before. 'Timmy' at HD will never have seen carpet before today because he normally works in 'Paints'....See More- 14 years ago
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