Hello. Thanks for visiting my first post. Any help will be much appreciated. Apologies for the War and Peace.....
My fiancee and I have recently got a loan to pay for our wedding and flat improvements. The flat is a first/top floor house conversion (house built circa 1890) in Bath (it's not listed). The improvements are in 3 main stages:
1. Bedroom;
2. Bathroom;
3. Kitchen.
We're hoping to be ***** and do as much of the work ourselves, despite being a bit green in house projects. But, we are limiting ourselves to what we feasibly can tackle ourselves.
We're doing the bedroom first because:
a) We're fed up with hearing the (probably Mutt and Jeff) older guy downstairs who has his TV on (our bedroom is above his). Not too loud, but loud enough to disrupt sleep and he probably falls asleep with the ruddy thing on all night. Mind you, I'm sure we wind him up with our footsteps, even if his hearing's on the way out;
b) Damp problems due to single thickness walls and the bedroom exposed on three out of four walls;
c) To give us temporary storage while we tackle the bathroom and kitchen;
d) To get rid of the hideous, foot exfoliating sea grass carpet previous owners in their infinite wisdom decided to put down. Yes, in a bedroom.
The bedroom is laid out roughly like this (approx 3.5m x 4.5m, with a pointless, draught inducing chimney that just goes up to the loft space and will need blocking off):
After sorting the floor, I'm hoping to resolve the damp and cold issue with this approach:
However, first of all is sorting out the floor itself. Currently (and without investigating too far beneath the floorboards), the floor looks to be made up of the following:
Insulation looks to be very old yellow fluffy stuff. Hate to think what kind of now banned substances it's made of! Doubt it's doing a job at all. On top of the joists are planks. From what I've seen, they don't look too great, plenty of gaps, etc.
You can see from the image above that the joists appear to go along the length of the bedroom, which does seem a bit daft. As a consequence, there is a bit of sag in the middle. We're not looking to rectify this as it'd mean ripping it out and starting again. It's bearable and too major an undertaking to deal with.
As the primary reason for our sorting the floor is to minimise airborne noise, we've looked at the following options to improve on what is there:
1. Insulation, Chipboard, 2mm Acoustic Matting, Medium Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
We've already got a load of Rockwool insulation to put between the joists and for building regs we think we need to suspend it using chicken wire for fire purposes. The chipboard should help fill in most of the gaps that the current planks will have, plus we'll probably fill with acoustic mastic. A single layer of acoustic matting should help capture a lot of the sound, plus isolate acoustically the room from the chipboard. The underlay has medium acoustic performance (probably rubber crumb stuff, but a good 1cm thick) and should help with both airborne and impact noise transmission. The carpet will be decent carpet and we'll probably get someone to fit this over the rest that we'll be doing.
2. As Option 1, But With Joist Caps
I like the idea of separating acoustically the chipboard from the joists as far as possible to minimise the transmission of sound from the room below up to the chipboard. Not sure if this is practical or whether it will achieve anything, but if it's possible to decouple the downstairs ceiling from the upstairs floor, is this worth investing in? If so, how would I fix the chipboard to the joists, or would I not bother, so it just floats?
3. Insulation, Chipboard With Impregnated Acoustic Layer, Medium Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
Similar to 2. except that the decoupling job of the joist caps has been replaced by the impregnated layer of rubbery stuff on the chipboard. Also this would do the job of the acoustic matting. Maybe won't save money, but should be simpler to install.
4. Insulation, Chipboard, Gucci Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
Same as 1, only the job of the matting and underlay has been replaced by the really expensive stuff (probably 400 notes for our 15m2 room), which seems to be rubber crumb sandwiched by 2 rubber layers. An example would be http://www.soundservice.co.uk/quietfloor_plus.html
This has led me to the following areas of uncertainty:
* Which of the above approaches would be best from a "cost/acoustic performance/effort to install" trade off point of view?
* Could we just get away with filling the gaps on the existing planks with mastic, putting down the Gucci underlay and new carpet or are we better doing the job properly?
* How does the above fit in with building regs? Do they apply here, bearing in mind that whatever we do will be better than current and we're not ripping up the whole floor?
* What's the best way to lay the chipboard? My assumption is perpendicular to the direction of the joists. What means of attaching them is best from an acoustic point of view? Screws, nails, No Nails (sounds a bit too Heath Robinson to me)?
* Will the sagging affect the laying of the chipboard at all?
* Is there anything we should be looking at doing where the floor meets the walls in terms of isolating for sound purposes?
Any help you can offer would be most appreciated. Please ask if you want any clarification on any of the above.
Many thanks,
Ross.
My fiancee and I have recently got a loan to pay for our wedding and flat improvements. The flat is a first/top floor house conversion (house built circa 1890) in Bath (it's not listed). The improvements are in 3 main stages:
1. Bedroom;
2. Bathroom;
3. Kitchen.
We're hoping to be ***** and do as much of the work ourselves, despite being a bit green in house projects. But, we are limiting ourselves to what we feasibly can tackle ourselves.
We're doing the bedroom first because:
a) We're fed up with hearing the (probably Mutt and Jeff) older guy downstairs who has his TV on (our bedroom is above his). Not too loud, but loud enough to disrupt sleep and he probably falls asleep with the ruddy thing on all night. Mind you, I'm sure we wind him up with our footsteps, even if his hearing's on the way out;
b) Damp problems due to single thickness walls and the bedroom exposed on three out of four walls;
c) To give us temporary storage while we tackle the bathroom and kitchen;
d) To get rid of the hideous, foot exfoliating sea grass carpet previous owners in their infinite wisdom decided to put down. Yes, in a bedroom.
The bedroom is laid out roughly like this (approx 3.5m x 4.5m, with a pointless, draught inducing chimney that just goes up to the loft space and will need blocking off):
After sorting the floor, I'm hoping to resolve the damp and cold issue with this approach:
However, first of all is sorting out the floor itself. Currently (and without investigating too far beneath the floorboards), the floor looks to be made up of the following:
Insulation looks to be very old yellow fluffy stuff. Hate to think what kind of now banned substances it's made of! Doubt it's doing a job at all. On top of the joists are planks. From what I've seen, they don't look too great, plenty of gaps, etc.
You can see from the image above that the joists appear to go along the length of the bedroom, which does seem a bit daft. As a consequence, there is a bit of sag in the middle. We're not looking to rectify this as it'd mean ripping it out and starting again. It's bearable and too major an undertaking to deal with.
As the primary reason for our sorting the floor is to minimise airborne noise, we've looked at the following options to improve on what is there:
1. Insulation, Chipboard, 2mm Acoustic Matting, Medium Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
2. As Option 1, But With Joist Caps
3. Insulation, Chipboard With Impregnated Acoustic Layer, Medium Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
4. Insulation, Chipboard, Gucci Acoustic Underlay & New Carpet
This has led me to the following areas of uncertainty:
* Which of the above approaches would be best from a "cost/acoustic performance/effort to install" trade off point of view?
* Could we just get away with filling the gaps on the existing planks with mastic, putting down the Gucci underlay and new carpet or are we better doing the job properly?
* How does the above fit in with building regs? Do they apply here, bearing in mind that whatever we do will be better than current and we're not ripping up the whole floor?
* What's the best way to lay the chipboard? My assumption is perpendicular to the direction of the joists. What means of attaching them is best from an acoustic point of view? Screws, nails, No Nails (sounds a bit too Heath Robinson to me)?
* Will the sagging affect the laying of the chipboard at all?
* Is there anything we should be looking at doing where the floor meets the walls in terms of isolating for sound purposes?
Any help you can offer would be most appreciated. Please ask if you want any clarification on any of the above.
Many thanks,
Ross.
