Sound Proofing A Floor

[Phil Lilley]

Anyone have any good experience soundproofing a floor? I need to screw down alot of the subfloor plywood. There are some vinyl products out there I've read about. Not going the light weight concrete way... too much.

[eric1978]

Are you saying you don't want to hear the floor creaking when you walk on it, or that you don't want folks downstairs to hear stomping around upstairs?

[Phil Lilley]

Both. We raised our kids over guest's rooms. They still tip-toe when they come home. But our carpet is now 21 years old and so it the pad. The floor creaks so we need to fix both problems. We have too many college kids over at the house late at night and they don't know the "rules".

[eric1978]

I laid new hardwood floors in my house last year, and I looked into soundproofing a little bit. Ultimately, I went ahead and skipped it since no one lives in the basement. After I pulled up the old carpet, I took a nail gun and put about a million 8 pennies along all the joists and especially where there were seems. Then I spent a little extra on a few cases of construction adhesive and applied a liberal bead to every plank of hardwood before I nailed it down. There's not a creak to be heard and it's actually pretty quiet downstairs, too, but all in all we have an inch and a half of wood with the 3/4 subfloor and 3/4 hardwood.

This was the stuff I was considering using but didn't...they have a product for every floor type...don't know if you're putting carpet back down or something else but they have products for all applications. You could always just double up the subfloor with a second layer of 3/4 plywood, but this stuff would probably be easier and better, though possibly not cheaper, plus you'd have to adjust your doors and moulding to accomodate the additional 3/4:

http://www.soundseal.com/impacta/impacta-home.shtml

[Kicknbass]

Phil,

What is the finish flooring to be?

Google s-1837 quiet comfort underlayment and see if this might be a product that you could use. This is a thin foam that is used w/ the installation of laminate flooring. This might be able to be installed under a 1/4" luan plywood underlayment to give an extra deadening layer to the floor system. Then your pad and carpet could be installed for your finished floor.

Another way to deaden the impact of sound is to install RC channel on the ceiling below, and then install another layer of drywall. You need to think of it as a floor / ceiling assembly protecting from sound transmission from both directions.

As to the floor squeaks, they are typically caused by rusty nails in the sub-floor. In addition to installing screws to the subfloor plywood, you need to consider pulling the original nails. The plywood has shrunk away from the nails and any slight movement will squeak. Remove the nails and the squeaks will be gone.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I agree the squeaks come from nails that no longer hold. You'll need to screw down the old floor material if you're going over it. The foam that is used under wood flooring will help.

If you pull the floor to the joist, fill the voids with insulation, the blow in type, and then screw everything down.