Chipwood is good for soundproofing your floors in your home. Your home should be quiet and peaceful enough to let you rest after dealing with the noise pollution outside. Fortunately, you can reduce floor noise through the use of acoustic chipboard or chipwood products.
Chipwood works to dampen noise as they are made with several layers of chipboards. These layers create a high-performance and robust soundproofing medium. As a result, they reduce impact and aerial sound transmission.
Also read: 4 Best Soundproof Wood Options
If your floor creaks or makes other noises when you walk on it, then chipwood is the perfect soundproofing solution. If that does not convince you, let us discuss the reasons why this material works excellently for soundproofing.
Why Should You Use Chipwood to Soundproof Your Floor?
Acoustic chipwood is a combination of several layers of P5 chipboard. These layers are bonded, turning them into a solid and sound-absorbing material.
A typical chipwood for soundproofing is 28mm thick. Despite this size, it can eliminate the impact of sound when you wall on your home’s floor.
Below are the reasons why chipwood is good for soundproofing:
Chipwood is excellent at absorbing sound
The quality of your acoustic chipwood will have a direct impact on how much it can control, absorb, and reduce noise impact. When using this material, make sure to cut each piece to fit the outline of your room.
It is also essential for you to leave one-eighth to one-fourth-inch gaps around all the chipwood’s edges.
Additionally, it is a must that you use a silicone or an acoustic sealant at the back of the boards before you screw or nail them on your floor. Once you have screwed them in place, apply an acoustic sealant to all the gaps between the boards.
This will ensure that the spread of noise from one layer to another will stop. As a result, your floor will be a lot quieter to walk on.
Excellent sound-breaking properties
The carpets and paddings on your floor already work to reduce sound vibrations, echoes, and bouncing of soundwaves. The material that your carpet is made with can absorb sound, which plays a significant role in making your home more silent.
However, carpets wear over time, reducing their ability to dampen sound. Fortunately, you can install acoustic chipwood blocks on the subfloor.
In addition, as your home becomes older and older, its floor’s components pull apart, thus causing them to become squeaky. It can be disturbing, especially when other people in your home are resting and you want to walk quietly.
Squeaks and creaks can be caused by separations or gaps between your floor’s surface and the subfloor. By adding acoustic chipwood, these unwanted noises will dampen, making your floor less noisy.
Absorbs vibration
When you are running an appliance that touches the floor, a washing machine, for instance, it produces a vibration that can be a noisy thing to deal with on the floor below. Vibrations can travel and pass through walls, so they can disturb even the other people you are living in your home or building.
The best way to reduce this vibration is to cover your floor with dense material. It is where acoustic chipwood comes into the picture.
As mentioned, this material has several layers. For this reason, they are dense enough to make sound transmission slower.
Moreover, sound moves a lot faster on a solid material than they do with liquid or gas. However, the density of the material that inhibits the noise is essential. When a material is denser, then that also means that it has more mass. And more mass means larger molecules.
When a material has large molecules, the slower its ability to transmit sound and vibration is.
Ideal soundproofing solution for existing timber floors
Acoustic chipwood is an excellent solution for noisy timber floors. It is because they have all the essential components when it comes to a complete soundproofing system.
For existing timber floors, the Building Regulations requires the following components to be installed:
- Acoustic flanking strips – placed around the timber floor’s perimeter
- Soundproofing wool – installed between your floor’s timber joints
- Acoustic chipwood – mounted on the subdecks of your timber floor.
How to Soundproof Your Noisy Floor
Wood floors design is such that they can support the weight of appliances, people, and furniture. However, many older houses have floors nailed rather than held in place by construction adhesive and wood screws. The problem is that nails will loosen over time.
It will result in a noisy and squeaky floor. But you can use acoustic chipwood to settle this issue.
Hover, before creating a solution, you initially need to:
- Find where the noise is coming from
- Prepare your safety gears
- Access the underfloor area
- Measure the floor where you need to install acoustic chipwood
- Install the chipwood
Locate the noise source on your floor
The first thing you need to do is find out which area of the floor needs fixing and soundproofing. You can do this by having someone walk on the floor while observing which part will make a noise when it received an impact. You can also hop on the floor and listen if it will vibrate.
Prepare your safety Gear.
After finding the noise source, access the underfloor area where you will place your chipwood. But before doing this, make sure that you are wearing a dust mask and a pair of safety glasses. Then, remove the first layer of your floor so you can access the area under it.
Measure the area that needs soundproofing
The next thing you need to do is to measure how much distance there is between floor joists. It is where you will install the chipwood. For this reason, make sure that you have the correct measurements not to have any problem during the installation.
After measuring your underfloor, place each chipwood block, making sure that each side is aligned.
Install your chipwood blocks
You should install each acoustic chipwood block one at a time. Use a generous amount of chipboard adhesive along the edges of each chipboard that contacts the underfloor. Once done, use a hammer to put pressure on the area where you have put construction glue.
It will help make sure that the adhesive is sticking tightly against the subfloor. Next, attach every end of your chipwood block to the floor joists using hanger nails.
Lastly, re-install your upper floor and see if you could remove the unwanted noise that your floor makes.
Final Thoughts: You Can Remove the Noise that Your Floor Creates Using Acoustic Chipwood
There is no denying that chipwood is an excellent soundproofing material. Just like your walls, windows, and doors, your home’s floor also responds to the different methods of noise reduction. That includes blocking, absorption, sound isolation, and breaking.
When you install chipwood on your floor, you will be able to reduce sound impact and vibration, making your home a lot more peaceful and quieter.
Sources:
- Joseph Truini, How to Soundproof a Room, Popular Mechanics, https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/interior-projects/how-to/g2470/soundproofing-a-room/ Accessed May 5, 2021.
- Bob Vila, Soundproof Your Floors, Bob Vila TM, https://www.bobvila.com/articles/371-soundproof-your-floors/ Accessed May 5, 2021.
- William Machin, How to Make the Floor Sturdier Underneath a Toilet, Home Guides, https://homeguides.sfgate.com/make-floor-sturdier-underneath-toilet-37920.html/ Accessed May 5, 2021.
- Lee Wellender, Sound Insulation to Dampen Noise Between Floors, https://www.thespruce.com/floor-underlayment-as-sound-barrier-1821090/ Accessed May 5, 2021.
- How to Soundproof a Floor, Soundproofing Cow, https://www.soundproofcow.com/soundproofing-101/how-to-soundproof-a-home-2/how-to-soundproof-a-floor-2/ Accessed May 5, 2021.