Insulating Noisy Floors: A Step Toward Soundproofing Your Home

Unless you live alone, you are well aware that the noise created by one family member can easily be heard beyond the walls of the room they are in. Even worse is hearing the TV, the washing machine and dryer or children who don't want to settle down for bed seeping through your flooring and into the rooms below.

There is a solution to reducing the noise within your home and one of the best preventative measures is insulating the floors.

Soundproofing a New Home

Ideally, soundproofing the floors should be installed during the construction phase of a home to be the most effective. Your choices in insulating materials include regular fibreglass insulations that have been used on your exterior walls, ceilings and in the attic. You can also install corking or rubber based floor insulation at this point.

Insulating the floors during construction allows the materials to be placed between the flooring layers. The joists between floors support and plywood base and then additional sub-flooring. By adding soundproofing here, you are able to add thicker materials that may offer better sound proofing.

Soundproofing an Existing Home.

If you are bothered by the noise in an existing home, the best time to soundproof is when you are replacing the old floor coverings or need to repair the flooring in a specific room.

As a house ages, the creaks and noises seem to increase. The addition of noise insulation to your floors as part of your next DIY project, you are giving the floors more stability that will not only reduce the amount of noise seeping from the rooms above, but will help quiet squeaky floors that suffer from loose screws over the years or whose boards may have warped a bit.

When old floor coverings have been removed, new floor insulation can be added directly to the top of the sub-flooring. This can be placed under, carpet, vinyl floors, wood, or ceramic tile.

The Best Products for Insulation

It doesn't matter what type of flooring is going on top. What does matter is what type of insulation you use to sound proof.

For floors a rubber or cork insulation will provide the most durable under lying material. It will also not raise the level of the floors significantly and will allow such materials as vinyl to go down smoothly.  

Consider soundproofing an investment in your house. The value will be increased as you improve the quality of noise control.