Friday, February 03, 2006

Installing Soundproof flooring

A lot of our good customers have installed soundproof flooring and have achieved some remarkable results. In todays posting I want to discuss some of the materials and methods for soundproofing an upstairs floor in a condo or even in a single family house. The two flag ship flooring underlays that we carry here at Soundproofing America are Impact Pro and Impact Standard. We will be talking about installing the impact standard soundproof flooring tiles.
Lets assume that we are starting our floor soundproofing project on a bare sub floor made of 3/4" plywood. It is a good idea to make sure the sub floor is clean and oil free before beginning out project.
There is a product that is now on the market called Green glue. If you have been keeping up with this blog, you know I have spoken about it many times. It is an excellent product for dampening structural noise transmission through drywall or other wall boards, but did you know it will work great as a dampening agent as well as an adhesive beneath a wood ot tile floor.
What we have discovered is that the Green glue work perfectly in conjunction with a flooring product such as the Impact Standard tiles. Basically you will need to contact the folks at www.audioalloy.com and find out how much Green glue you will need to cover the square footage you are soundproofing. Generally the Green glue can be applied in a "S" pattern that covers the entire subfloor. Once the Green glue is applied, you will then lay down the 2' X2' Impact Standard tiles. These tiles will go down over top of the Green Glue and will be sealed to the subfloor. The combination of Green Glue and the 5/16" thick flooring tiles makes for an excellent soundproof floor.
Once the Green Glue is applied and the Impact Standard tiles are layed out onto the sub floor, you will tape the seams of the Impact Standard with a sealer tape that is available at Soundproofing America and you will also want to caulk around the perimeter of the tiles. Once you have completed this instalation, you can put down any type flooring you desire, such as engineered hardwood floors, ceramic tile, or carpet and padding. This soundproof floor system work and will greatly reduce the impact as well as the airborne noise from traveling down through the sub floor and down to the neighbor below.
We had a one of our customers in New York install the Impact Standard flooring material using the Green Glue as a dampener/ adhesive for the tiles and as the contractors were nailing down the engineered hardwood flooring, the neighbors below reported that they could not even hear the hammering of the nails into the floor. That is a pretty amazing testimony. The point is that these soundproof flooring products do indeed work. If you need more information on these or any of our state of the art products, please call us toll free @ (877) 530-0139 there will be someone there to answer your call 6 days a week. Thanks for reading and learning about soundproofing your floors.

As Always,

Bob Orther
e-mail: dr.bob@soundproofingamerica.com
Call Toll free (877) 530-0139