2. home-theater
  3. 181741-155632

Insulation between floors - how affective?

My home theater System is in a room on top of a hot water baseboard heating system in the basement.  So every time the boiler fires up and the pump is circulating water I can hear it.  Very annoying. Also my air conditioner compressor sits on the other side of the exterior wall but not much I can do about that.

 Anyone use insulation batts to stuff in the basement ceiling rafters to deaden sound. Rockwool/roxul has some sound reducing insulation batts that looks interesting.

jumia
erik_squires
16,144 posts
 

So, to be clear, the pump in the room below, not the circuilating pipes, is what you are hearing?

You could isolate the pump itself, or finish the basement ceiling.  Of course, insulate the space above the ceiling.  If that is not good enough then a second layer of sheetrock with resilient channel in between is the usual recommendation.

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jumia OP
528 posts
 

It's the pump motor and I wonder if insulating the rafters Will get rid of that sound.  Heating water flowing through the pipes is fairly quiet.  
 

I'm concerned the sound maybe radiating up along the side of the structure and vibrating a wall that transfers sound into the room.  Which means the sound vibrating from the pump motor maybe fairly integrated into the structure and not really avoidable to a large degree.  I may be able to put a Band-Aid on it but it'll still bleed through.  So I stay with a smaller room versus expanding to a larger room which would've been really nice

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