Insulating a ceiling

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I’m trying to weigh up then pros and cons for adding insulation between a ground floor and first floor room.

A few questions...

1. Does adding insulation into a ground floor ceiling (between the joists) provide much benefit for heat & sound insulation?
2. Is it easiest to add it into a ceiling (as the ceiling is going to be skimmed anyway) or easiest to lift floorboards upstairs?
3. Which insulation would you recommend as being the best?

Thanks for the help and advice.
 
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1. It will make the kitchen warmer and the bedroom colder. If you use suitable material it may reduce sound transmission, but only certain types of sound.

2. Fitting it below the existing ceiling would be relatively easy, if you can afford the loss of ceiling height, though you have to consider e.g. light fittings. Removing the ceiling to fit between the joists is not particularly difficult, depending on the construction of the ceiling, but may be very messy. The difficulty of lifting the floor upstairs will depend a bit on its construction.

3. It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

What is your motivation here? Cold bedroom? Cold kitchen? Kids kept awake by noise from kitchen? People in kitchen disturbed by music from upstairs? Noise from people running around upstairs?
 
1. Thanks for the reply. It's a bedroom and a front room. The motivation is to keep the lounge nice and warm and also reduce the noise travelling in both direction.

2. It would be removing the ceiling and fitting then re boarding and plastering.

3. Partly heat but it's mainly for sound dampening as current it feel like there not much between the rooms. Strange as the house is 1973 so I thought it'd be quite good for that.
 
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Have you checked what is between ceiling & floor currently?
 
So adding insulation between them won’t really help. It’s more worthwhile using a system like the ones in the link you’ve posted?
 
Footsteps from upstairs are best dealt with by putting down a carpet.

Airbourne noise i.e. tv may be helped by adding acoustic mineral wool between the ceiling and floor, but you should not expect a miracle. Also using resilient bars or similar to decouple the ceiling from the joists, and using acoustic plasterboard for the new ceiling, might help similarly. Part of the problem is that the ceiling is only part of the problem as noise also travels via walls etc.
 
I have a couple of flats that were converted in the late 80's. Sound traveled badly between the properties, and there were a lot of noise issues. I took up the carpet, and lifted ever 6th floorboard, and cut 170mm rockwool into strips, and pushed the batts under the floorboards from each side. I managed to do a flat a day, and it deadedned the sound incredibly. You could still hear if someone had the TV or music up high, but it softend it nicely. It was a cheap and cheerful fix, and I suspect I could have done better using proper sound deadening material, but at the time, the rockwool was being sold cheap.
 
Current regs require 100mm of rockwool or equivalent between floors [did this with my extention recently] the heat retention is better than sound insulation.
 
Ok, I'm looking at the Genie Clip system which uses Furring Strip to attach acoustic plasterboard to and 100mm Rockwool Sound Insulation Slabs to go in the void. What do you guys think to this? If I go for this approach do you think that using two layers of 12.5mm acoustic PB is necessary or just one will suffice? Do you think it needs to be "acoustic PB" or will regular PB be fine?

I'm looking to order up some materials tomorrow morning so any help/advice would be great please.
Thanks
 
Those clips are not cheap :(

I honestly don't know how much difference each component makes. I've just done a ceiling with resilient bars and two layers of PB, one acoustic and one fireproof - but as the room doesn't have a door on it yet, I don't know how effective it is!

Don't expect miracles.
 
Yes they seem quite expensive as do the furring strips. Looks like the rubber on the clips will do a good job though. A good lag of rockwool and a layer of acoustic PB’s will hopefully make a big difference. I’d be interested in your results. Sounds a really good job.
 
I put in a second set of joists in between the existing ones, bottom edges approx 50mm below existing, wove sheepswool insulation layer in between the two sets of joists, 15mm plasterboard and skim, and it has made a big difference to sound transmission, both up and down. Partly I didn't use the resilient bar approach because they seemed very expensive, and partly because existing joists are not at all level.
I also sealed around the edges of floorboards (from below). If I was doing it again, I might possibly be tempted to use something more dense than the sheepswool, and I also have the option of acoustic underlay, and thicker carpets upstairs.
 

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