Acoustic Floating Floors

Acoustic floating floors are primarily designed to reduce impact sound within a floor system. This floor type gets its name from the fact that there are mechanical fixings between the floor and the property’s structure, making it ‘float’. The quality of the resilient layer to the underside of the products dictates the level of impact reduction, the resilient layer should act as a spring pushing back against footfall.

Floating floors can also help reduce some airborne sound by providing a good airtight seal for the floor system and also increasing the mass of the overall system. The deeper the floating floors, such as the Cradle floating floors and Batten flooring floors provide enhances airborne sound reduction. If a slimmer system is required to improve both airborne and impact sound, Cellecta Screedboard 28 is a cement particle board with a good quality resilient layer. The high mass board provides additional mass in the floor system increasing the airborne sound reduction.

Floating floors can come in multiple forms including:

Standard Acoustic Floating Floors – This are made up of a structural board with a resilient layer affixed to one side. The flooring is glued down and the resilient layer allows the floor to float over the existing floor. This are the thinnest floating floors available and are approximately 20mm thick.

Acoustic Batten Floating Floors – This are made up of timber battens up to 70mm deep, these have a resilient layer affixed to one side. The batten are laid over the floor and the new flooring layer is applied to the battens. This type of floor allows mineral wool to be inserted in the floor system to help airborne sound reduction. These systems raise the floor by approximately 90mm.

Cradle Acoustic Floating Floors – Acoustic Cradles which have a resilient layer to the underside are used to mount timber battens and the new flooring is applied to the batten system. This floor type also allows mineral wool to be inserted in the floor system to help reduce airborne sound. These systems raise the floor by a minimum of 90mm and can also be used to help level uneven flooring.

All 3 types of acoustic floating floors are used within our soundproofing floor designs to help achieve the requirements of Part E of the Building Regulations. Any acoustic floating floor will have to be installed with an appropriate acoustic ceiling solution below with dense mineral wool insulation.

The Soundproofing Floors and Soundproofing Walls section of our website shows multiple designs to help achieve the requirements of Part E of the building regulations. Floating floors can be used on either concrete or timber floors but are more traditionally used in timber floor constructions. Some floating floors allow you to install them directly onto the joist system, the sound insulation design we offer require the installation of a subfloor of 18 – 22mm chipboard to be overlaid over the existing joists. This provides a level surface to install the floating floor on, two of the more popular acoustic floating floor designs are the following:

17mm Deckfon 17T – This standard acoustic floating floor system is installed within a traditional timber joist construction with dense mineral wool between the joists and a MuteClip Acoustic Clip ceiling below.

Cellecta Batten 35 – This batten acoustic floating floor system is installed within a traditional timber joist construction with dense mineral wool between the joists and a MuteClip Acoustic Clip ceiling below.

There are various other sound insulation design for floors and walls to achieve Part E compliance on the soundproofing advice section of our website.