Sound proofing for wooden floors in a Georgiam House?

[Le_may]

Hi, wondered if anyone has any good advice for sound proofing before laying a wooden floor.

I live in the top floor flat of a converted 3 floor Georgian house, I have slowly be renovating and now ready to do the floors which we want natural wood. We are very conscious of keeping the sound down for the neighbours below us, especially as my boyfriend is so heavy footed. We will be doing the work ourselves so any advice/recommendations would be greatly received.

- Is there a legal requirement of sound proofing required?
- Which is the most cost effective and easiest method to do ourselves?
- Any other hints & tips?

A big thank you in advance,

Helen

 

[JohnD]

carpet.

sorry.

 

[masona]

and slippers

 

[Symptoms]

Hang on a minute Helen ... Georgian house says to me very wide old floorboards so why change them? Of course I suspect the answer will be something like "we haven't got any of those, the builders who converted the house swapped them for chipboard". Anyway, plenty of advice waiting if you supply a bit more info on what's there at the moment. There will be a solution.

 

[joe-90]

Agree with john - carpet.

 

[Le_may]

The orginal floor boards are there, but they have gaps between them and are in quite a bad state.

My thinking was to put some sort of sound proof underlay underneath the wooden floor, but I have also read that you can put stuff between the joists.

unfortuantely carpet isn't an option, as in a couple of years we would like to rent the flat out, wood floors are the preference.

Let me know if you need any more details?

Thanks h

 

[JohnD]

..unfortuantely carpet isn't an option, as in a couple of years we would like to rent the flat out, wood floors are the preference...

It IS an option. What you mean is that it isn't what you want. This is not at all the same thing.

bear in mind the risk that your downstairs neighbours may sue you (or your tenants), complain to the council, or come up in the middle of the night with an axe.

Hard floors are very very noisy and unneighbourly.

 

[Deluks]

Carpet it is then If you want hard floors buy a proper house, or buy out your neighbours.

Actually though you could get a specialist company in to install a floating floor, but I don't mean a scraggy bit of underlay, I'm talking about an expensive engineered solution, but it will most likely raise the existing floor height, and will cost many many pounds.

 

[bananaspark]

assuming you have access to a garden or a large spare room to work in, access to a van, a few spare weeks and about a grand and a half to spend on tools and materials read on...

carefully prize out your boards and skirting, remove nails from the wood and joists, hire a bench router and if the planks are thick enough (i.e. havent been sanded much) t&g your boards. If they're too thin or warped for that, 'L' route them instead.

Get some more reclaimed wood cos you'll bugger up a few ripping them out and some boards may be be totally nackered

Nows a good time to sand the lot with a belt sander, not too much sanding or you'll lose the texture.

Fix a layer of plasterboard between joists, then shove some rockwool onto that (follow all safety instructions with this stuff), sandwich on top another layer of plasterboard -the denser the better.
i used those mini L brackets to secure the boards to the joists.

seal the edges where the board meets the joist with accoustic/fire sealant.
with a bit of luck by now you havent cursed the previous spark or plumber for leaving a mess of pipes and wires to deal with.

cut some strips of rubber matting and glue them to the joists, buy some joist clamps and a couple of boxes of spax self tapping screws glue the edges with a hybrid polymer glue, and start relaying onto joists.

End result, as good a result accoustically as you can reasonably get without raising the floor levels.

b/