My girlfriend and I have recently bought a house, but the floorboards upstairs are incredibly squeaky, it's all chipboard. We're planning on having a couple of lodgers living downstairs, but I'm aware that unless we sort the floor out first, it'll drive them insane whenever we're walking around upstairs. We'd really appreciate some advice on what the best flooring solution would be to eliminate both impact noise (from walking around) and airborne noise (we're planning on having a child at some point in the future). We'd ideally want to have proper floorboards fitted rather than chipboard due to better durability and ease of access in case parts of the floor need pulling up in future (accessing pipes etc.) I was thinking that we could put soundproof underlay directly on top of the floorboards and then carpet over the top (to help cancel out the airborne noise). I've also seen some joist caps that fit between each joist and the subfloor above which apparently helps further reduce footfall noise, however apparently these aren't compatible with normal floorboards. Is there a similar solution that can be used with floorboards? Can anyone advise on which flooring solution we'd be best going for please? Thanks a lot
The “best” to go for would be to change the chipboard to floorboards or ply, use Regupol then a quality carpet underlay. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I really don’t like chipboard and that’s what they’re made for so I would personally give them a swerve. The ideal option is expensive and would raise the floor by 20+cm and unless someone is playing drums upstairs the other option will keep the height down and give the best acoustic performance other than creating a room within a room. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Depends on the audio frequencies mate, they don’t deal with high-mids and high frequencies the same as low-mids and lows. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That’s why I mentioned regupol too, it’s extra layers that’ll help without creating a false floor. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
