Floating floor in live room

[ZEUSS]

Time to redo my live room.Is it worth it in the end to float your live room floor? I have a choice of either plywood underlayment or floating it. Will floating it make enough of a difference for the extra cost. What kind of wood are you guys using? I might go with oak.

[TonyBelmont]

Floating will only be worth it if it is done properly.... Other wise it will be a waste of money.... You have to calculate the weight of everything that will be in the room, as well as the weight of the actual walls, etc... Then, at that point you can figure what type of material and the durometer of the floating agent to be used... I have already said too much, and fear I will be kicked out of the secret studio designer's society.

Unfortunately, these are the things that you have to pay the big bucks to have done right...

[ZEUSS]

I thought so. My floor is concrete anyways. I had part of the room done with some parquet 1X1. I am going to do the whole thing now.So lay down some High density fiberboard and then glue the stuff down and that should be it? I wont run into any resonation problems?

[dbbubba]

In my experience "floating" the floor means to have the concrete sawn and having the structure isolated from the rest of the building (control room, etc...)

Of all of the studios I have owned or used the best sounding floor is a concrete slab with parquet.
I had a room once with industrial carpet laid on the concrete without a pad and it was decent enough. Investing in some dancefloor squares is good when the floor is too spongey.

I used one studio for years that had a floor built to level the old church floor from the original structure and although they used 2" x 12" and spent thousands of dollars it didn't get a very good drum sound. It was probebly the biggest single expense during construction, but it was less than great.

The more solid the beter!

Dnny Brown

[stevep]

Originally Posted by ZEUSS

I thought so. My floor is concrete anyways. I had part of the room done with some parquet 1X1. I am going to do the whole thing now.So lay down some High density fiberboard and then glue the stuff down and that should be it? I wont run into any resonation problems?

Why lay down fiberboard ? you can glue the parquet to the concrete



steve

[sounddevisor]

I wonder if we're talking about two different kinds of "floating" floor here. What most studio guys mean by "floating" is that the floor (or better, the entire room) is decoupled from the rest of the building - that's what dbbubba is describing - for isolation purposes.

What most contractors and flooring installers mean when they say "floating" is a floor which is not nailed or glued down - the strips (or squares) of flooring material attach to each other with some sort of tongue-and-groove mechanism, but the whole assembly just rests ("floats") on some sort of underlayment. I think that might be what Zeuss is talking about.

There can be problems with putting finished flooring directly on a concrete slab. If the concrete is uneven or rough, it may be difficult to get the flooring smooth and level. If the concrete is below grade, you may have issues with water which will, over time, cause most adhesives to de-adhere. A buddy of mine put parquet squares on his basement floor, glued directly to the concrete, and they looked great for about two years. Now they are buckling and peeling off everywhere and look like crap.

In a case like that, floating the floor can work well because it allows for some movement of the floor in response to changes in temp. and humidity. Basically, you cover the concrete with some sort of foam or plastic underlayment, along with a vapor barrier (may be built into the foam underlayment.) When you put the flooring on top of that, you cut the boards so that the edges fall about 1/4" short of the walls, which allows the entire floor to expand and contract a little and (hopefully) prevents buckling and heaving.

I would be very careful about trying to glue finished flooring directly to concrete, unless you know for sure that you don't have any water issues.

[ZEUSS]

Originally Posted by sounddevisor

What most contractors and flooring installers mean when they say "floating" is a floor which is not nailed or glued down - the strips (or squares) of flooring material attach to each other with some sort of tongue-and-groove mechanism, but the whole assembly just rests ("floats") on some sort of underlayment. I think that might be what Zeuss is talking about.

There can be problems with putting finished flooring directly on a concrete slab. If the concrete is uneven or rough, it may be difficult to get the flooring smooth and level. If the concrete is below grade, you may have issues with water which will, over time, cause most adhesives to de-adhere. A buddy of mine put parquet squares on his basement floor, glued directly to the concrete, and they looked great for about two years. Now they are buckling and peeling off everywhere and look like crap.

In a case like that, floating the floor can work well because it allows for some movement of the floor in response to changes in temp. and humidity. Basically, you cover the concrete with some sort of foam or plastic underlayment, along with a vapor barrier (may be built into the foam underlayment.) When you put the flooring on top of that, you cut the boards so that the edges fall about 1/4" short of the walls, which allows the entire floor to expand and contract a little and (hopefully) prevents buckling and heaving.

I would be very careful about trying to glue finished flooring directly to concrete, unless you know for sure that you don't have any water issues.

This is what i meant. sorry for the confusion. The contractor said the same exact thing. That is how we are going to do it. I decided to not go with the parquet and go with 3 inch wide strips of oak with a natural finish.

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally Posted by sounddevisor

There can be problems with putting finished flooring directly on a concrete slab. If the concrete is uneven or rough, it may be difficult to get the flooring smooth and level. If the concrete is below grade, you may have issues with water which will, over time, cause most adhesives to de-adhere. A buddy of mine put parquet squares on his basement floor, glued directly to the concrete, and they looked great for about two years. Now they are buckling and peeling off everywhere and look like crap.

A few companies make what I can only describe as a "self-leveling" compound to level out uneven concrete floors. Basically you mix it up & pour it on the floor and with a little luck & some encouragement (you DO have to spread it around a bit) it'll find the low points of the floor and fill 'em out so you'll have a nice even surface to lay a finished floor on. You can also get special masonry paints that will seal out some of the moisture and IMO, it's worth putting a coat or two down before the plastic or foam vapor barrier.

Good luck!

[Duffster]

I just intalled floating floors in all my main studios. The change is the thermal and acoustic isolation in the room changed dramatically. Although my studio is not done, the floating floors changed the environment in my studio dramatically as far a thermal and acoustic isolation. I am not sure if this product is available in the US... but this is what I installed in my studio in Brasil.