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

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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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

I feel your pain as my gas boiler is right next to my dedicated listening room in the basement. Sucks. See the link below for Premier Home Theater by Earl Geddes and you’ll get some very approachable and effective options, specifically in chapter 11. My knee-jerk response would be to install two different thicknesses of Sheetrock bonded together with Green Glue and maybe even install resilient channels — depends on how serious you wanna get about this, but those are only two of many ways to attack this. Best of luck.

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/HT/Home_theater.pdf

Check first that this isn't a routine maintenance issue. Noise from circulating water could be air in the baseboard piping. You'll need to bleed and fill. Rumbling noise from a boiler could be a restriction in the chimney or flue, caused by soot (sort of like clogged arteries). Maybe time for a chimney sweep.