insulation quandary

[Ridgebacks]

Can any body advise how I can best insulate my house at minimal cost.

Regrettably we are not talking standard type build and insulation, I doubt.

I have a dormer style 1960's house, however the kitchen lounge and dining room are upstairs (due to the panoramic views), and the bedrooms being downstairs, with the upstairs flooring being pine floor boards.

We want to keep the flooring as these floor boards, and are just completing the final stages of rewiring, but are noting how, with having had the floor boards up, there is no sound insulation and as such, no matter how quiet you are when you are upstairs, if someone is in bed downstairs, they can hear everything. My husband has described me as a herd of elephants when one Saturday morning I got up early and started to quietly tidy round upstairs in the kitchen. This is far from ideal especially as we have a 7 yr old daughter.

Can anyone suggest a relatively cheap form of insulation for this that we could install ourselves (as we have run up lots of cost with rewire), and that we would not need to take up the entire upstairs flooring (which would be completely impractical when we live in the house).

Look forward to your comments

 

[Cindysotherhalf]

The only way I can see of doing this cheaply is to remove a couple of floorboards every metre or so and pushing 50mm rockwool or similar mineral fibre insulation between the joists. If you overfill the gap you defeat the objective, sound is absorbed in the air gaps in the insulation. Hope this helps.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

There are no cheap solutions for insulating against sound.

 

[sherburn]

...unless you go for the eggboxes stuck to the ceiling effect

 

[mointainwalker]

"The only way I can see of doing this cheaply is to remove a couple of floorboards every metre or so and pushing 50mm rockwool or similar mineral fibre insulation between the joists. If you overfill the gap you defeat the objective, sound is absorbed in the air gaps in the insulation. Hope this helps. " Quote from cindysotherhalf.



Disagree completely. Air transmits sound, mass absorbs it. If you were to attempt this, stuff in as much as possible, but it would still be pretty ineffective.

You'll have to choose between nice-looking noisy boards or less attractive , quieter carpet.

 

[seasickstevie]

I've just dealt with this problem, but I used 100mm 60kg/m3 Rockwool, which meant lifting the entire floor (you won't squeeze it though a small gap), and then went on to fit a floating floor. It did the job.

Probably without the floating floor it would have made a noticable improvement, but couldn't be achieved without lifting pretty much all the floor.

. . . and it wasn't cheap !