Good afternoon, dear guests and subscribers of my channel!
Of course, no one wants to be noisy downstairs when someone is upstairs, stomping, watching TV or listening to music. In the same way, and vice versa, guests are noisy downstairs, and the child cannot sleep in his bedroom on the second floor.
Unfortunately - yes, wooden floors cannot boast of good sound insulation, and if the cat jumped to the floor from window sill on the second floor, you can hear it in all parts of a wooden (frame, SIP-panel) house, especially at night.
In my practice, many people deliberately increase the height of beams or logs in order to fill more dense mineral insulation, mistakenly believing that it will be better. In fact, it won't be better, mineral wool does not remove the entire spectrum of noise.
Let's remember physics ...
There are many types of noise and in a wooden floor they are most pronounced. structural and acoustic. In addition, noises are further subdivided by frequency: mid-frequency, high-frequency, and low-frequency. And each of them must be fought separately!
Have you noticed that if music is playing somewhere far away, then most often you hear low frequencies: drum or bass. Low frequency is able to penetrate more air thickness with less attenuation. So, the lowest frequency is the most disgusting, and it is this frequency that is absorbed by a material with a large mass! No wool, even of the highest density, is capable of withstanding low frequencies.
Secondly, the most painful noise is a low frequency impact noise, to which the stomp when walking is related. Impact noise is a type of structure-borne noise that propagates inside a building structure, no matter concrete or wood.
The next type is acoustic noise (echo). This noise follows the impact. Sound waves are reflected inside the ceiling, so after the impact, a gradually fading rumble is heard for some time, causing discomfort.
All noise has a decay period called reverberation time (the time from peak to 0 dB), so by minimizing this time, we will significantly reduce audibility between floors.
So, for good sound insulation of the floor, we need to fight:
- with high and low frequencies;
- with echo;
- with impact noise.
Treble and bass
It is important to remember that low frequencies are extinguished by material that has a large mass, and medium and high frequencies are extinguished by fibrous materials and no matter in what sequence they are located inside the floor, the main thing is that they must be present and extinguish sound waves.
It is enough to refer to the book by V. Blazi "Building Physics", which is very popular among professional designers and constructors. There are more than 10 options for soundproofing wooden floors, and here are some of them:
Fibrous material does not work on its own, but only effectively works in conjunction with heavy materials that are heavy enough to damp the low frequency.
Sand, granule sifting, concrete tiles or CP-screed are used as heavy materials.
Impact and acoustic noise
Striking the floor overhead is converted to sound. Part of the wave is smoothed by using an elastic spacer between the log and the floor beam. It can be a piece of linoleum or rubber. It is this gasket that partially cuts off the sound propagating along the building structure.
To prevent sound reflection (echo) between the beams inside the floor, it is enough to insulate the beams themselves from the sides and you can not clog the entire space with fibrous material.
In practice, in order for the ceiling to provide reliable sound insulation of especially low frequencies, 80 kg are required per 1 square meter. dry sand (layer thickness 6-7 cm) or grain screening, and to exclude the effect of sound reverberation (echo), it is enough to lay on the sand and insulate the beams with any fibrous material 100 mm thick.
Any fiber that scatters high-frequency sound can be used as a fibrous material, for example: linen insulation, cellulose insulation or mineral wool.
I hope the article was helpful to you!
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