Hello,

We decided to replace our carpet with hardwood. Got a nice deal and purchased a truck load (almost) of 3/4" Tiete Rosewood that must be nailed down.
We live in N. California which is pretty dry in the summer, and gets a little rain in the cooler season.
Ground floor subfloor is concrete (under the carpet and pad). Upper floor subfloor is 3/4" plywood on joists.

We are starting in a walk-in closet upstairs to see how it goes...

So far... removed the carpet, pad and strip to which carpet was stapled. Sanded some portions where the plywood pieces were not sitting flat, so that it's max 1/8" over 6'. Removed baseboard (plan to reuse, it's about 1/2"), cut door jamb, cut drywall just in case, to provide extra expansion gap. Wood has been getting acclimatized for a good month or more.

Right now I need to figure out what to use as an underlayment. 15lb asphalt felt seems standard but I wonder what I can do to reduce the thump thump noise when someone walks in the upper floor. (It's an independent house so no code to worry about.)

Does stuff like Harmony 3-in-1 help? The plywood subfloor is already in place so all I can do is put the 3-in-1 in between the plywood and the finished hardwood. I'm wondering what the plastic will do to the wood touching it... maybe it will become damp and start rotting? The specs indicate it is generally for laminate and similar floating floors...

Wonder if you can help me with this... The content on the NWFA site seems to have disappeared.

Thanks!

I,m not familiar with Harmony.

I have used a lot of Insulayment. It's perfect for what your talking about, and no plastic.
Infact the job I'm on right now is naildown over insulayment, on a 2nd floor.

http://www.mpglobalproducts.com


Be sure to acclimate the wood UPSTAIRS. It's a different environment than downstairs.

Thanks! I will do that in the closet and see how it goes.

Will finish the closet experiment and continue with 2nd floor if all goes well, then get back in touch later when I get to the other sticky areas e.g. concrete (downstairs), stairs, etc.

When you fasten through a sound deadener, it loses most of its effectiveness. However, I have found that using 2.5 m.m. or 3 m.m. cork is a reasonable option and tends to increase the comfort level of the space the floor is installed in as well as reduces the sound transmission to areas below, to a degree.

Correct! The fasteners will transfer all the noise into the subfloor, no matter what pad you use.

The key word is, isolation.

[quote="dennis"]When you fasten through a sound deadener, it loses most of its effectiveness.


All I can go by is that I have installed many thousands of feet of naildown, over 15 pound felt, and over insulayment sound deadener. There is no comparrison, a huge difference. A Hardwood Floor that's pretty darn quiet, and all homeowners have been happy. I dont believe there's enough difference of sound to be noticable, between cork and insulayment. But a large dollar difference.

Or you can try the floor muffler

I didn't want to get into redoing the subfloor to float it. Or redoing the stuff inside the first floor ceiling with sound deadening material. I was looking for a simpler approach.

I tried walking on wood over wood subfloor vs. wood, underlayment, wood subfloor; the difference was noticeable.
So I went with insulayment based on the responses to this thread (thanks!) I couldn't find a store that stocked cork, even though it was around the same price.

Results so far: It's more silent than the linoleum on wood subfloor we have in the bathrooms. But carpet with pad is definitely more silent: you can jump on it and land on your heels without much noise traveling below. With hardwood you need to walk more on your toes if you want to be silent. In a way it encourages walking lightly, perhaps there are indirect health benefits associated with that!

And it's tough to sneak to the refrigerator at night

Been noticing that I've started snacking more! Got to have something to do with chiseling this rock hard wood .