What is the best material to build your floor?
- Thread starter caesar
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What issues with wood floors? Vibration? Scratches? Isolation? Isolation can be obtained but costs -- you have to build a room within a room. There are special dampeners used to support a floating floor (then you have to float the walls and ceiling, too).
I have a room within a room and have 3/4" maple laminate as the surface material. The floating floor in the mastering room is sitting on the Kinetics Noise Control "KIP" isolators.
I used Kinetics Noise Control and ASC products throughout the construction.
Small world (or great minds, eh?); I used Kinetics IsoClips to build my media room. The only issue is that I could not float the ceiling (at least with reasonable construction in the house) and so can still hear loud footfalls from the kitchen above (mechanically transmitted). Sound leakage, even into my son's bedroom next door, is essentially nil.
Maple is a popular floor choice; hard and tight-grained. Oak looks nicer to some (and is what we have upstairs) but maple is generally better.
Still wondering if I should have mapped out a way to support the ceiling on the (floating) walls, but ran into code problems that would have cost me another foot of height and I didn;t really have it to give...
Maple is a popular floor choice; hard and tight-grained. Oak looks nicer to some (and is what we have upstairs) but maple is generally better.
Still wondering if I should have mapped out a way to support the ceiling on the (floating) walls, but ran into code problems that would have cost me another foot of height and I didn;t really have it to give...
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That is probably what I should have done... I followed a friend's build and used the clips everywhere, but (despite their supposedly "universal" application) they do not provide sufficient isolation when used to mount a ceiling. They allow pounding from above to be transmitted through, though they seem to work OK isolating the room above from what's inside my media room. For various reasons it would have been harder to get our contractor to work with the hangers (he loved the clips, however) and it wasn't clear our inspector would pass the hangers for residential use (though I suspect we would have been fine).
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---I luv ceramic tiles and wood myself. :b ...With polymer compound underneath (behind).
... No nails, no screws, no metal; just glue.
... No nails, no screws, no metal; just glue.
If it's above grade, then no problem.
If it's below grade and the concrete isn't sealed, then I would say no. You need a moisture barrier or you'll have mold spores growing in your carpet. If I were doing carpet below grade, I'd first put down a vapor barrier, then double layer marine grade plywood glued together with green glue then the carpet.
Actually, since concrete tends to "weep" if it is contact with the ground above or below grade, I would follow Bruce's advice about a moisture barrier either way. For that matter, last time I looked at multilevel with concrete subfloors, there was a barrier installed.
Just looking for good sound. I'm thinking of a concrete with a hard wood floor on top of it.
Mike L has both. His room is above grade and the front part of the room is hardwood and the back half is carpeted.
The goal for any absorber is to make it broadband. If it is not that, then it will filter the high frequency reflections and not the lows, causing that modified sound to mix with the direct sound and color it. From Dr. Toole's book of acoustics:
"It is probably safe to
assume that the floor will have carpet (best if it is a clipped-pile, jute-backed,
acoustically porous type), installed over a thick felt cushion so that the combination
behaves like a broadband absorber (see Figure 21.3). It should be in a
location that provides some attenuation of the fl oor bounce from the front L,
C, and R loudspeakers."
Beyond the first reflection, as Don mentions, covering the floor helps to bring the reverberation time of the room to the reasonable range of 0.4 to 0.5 second at 500 Hz. If you have a bare room, it will be 2 to 3 times higher which will harm dialog/vocal intelligibility. I measured 0.8 seconds in our mostly naked vacation house living room with wood floor and the results is as stated: we have trouble even understanding each other! Indeed a great test of whether your room is too reflective is to have someone stand where the speaker is and talk and see if you can understand them in normal voice.
"It is probably safe to
assume that the floor will have carpet (best if it is a clipped-pile, jute-backed,
acoustically porous type), installed over a thick felt cushion so that the combination
behaves like a broadband absorber (see Figure 21.3). It should be in a
location that provides some attenuation of the fl oor bounce from the front L,
C, and R loudspeakers."
Beyond the first reflection, as Don mentions, covering the floor helps to bring the reverberation time of the room to the reasonable range of 0.4 to 0.5 second at 500 Hz. If you have a bare room, it will be 2 to 3 times higher which will harm dialog/vocal intelligibility. I measured 0.8 seconds in our mostly naked vacation house living room with wood floor and the results is as stated: we have trouble even understanding each other! Indeed a great test of whether your room is too reflective is to have someone stand where the speaker is and talk and see if you can understand them in normal voice.
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