What kind of impact sound insulation for underfloor heating?
Soon we'll be installing laminate or hardwood flooring in the children's rooms and in the parent's area. Until now, we have always laid 5 mm thick impact soundproofing or glued parquet over the entire surface. However, now we have underfloor heating and the floor construction has to allow the heat to pass through as well as possible.
Is there a certain type of impact sound insulation that will work for this, and how thick should it be? Have you had any positive experiences with certain products?
Answers
For hardwood flooring, I recommend full-surface bonding. Better heat transfer = less heating costs, less stress/seam formation, quieter walking noise (in the room itself), easier to sand,....
As a rule of thumb, laminate cannot be glued because a) manufacturers usually don't allow it and b) economically (price of glue : price of laminate) it would be a bit of a disaster.
For laminate (or parquet, if you prefer), look for a substrate with a very low thermal resistance (not to be confused with the thermal conductivity coefficient).
Here we recommend 0.01 m2K/W or less (the upper values are about 0.004 m2K/W). For comparison, 2 mm thick cork has a coefficient of 0.040, as does standard foam foil. So 4 to 10 times more...
The thickness of the substrate is ideal – from 1.5 to 3 mm.
We have a 1.8mm thick impact soundproofing laminate with a vapor-proof underside (glued with special aluminum adhesive tape to form a vapor-proof surface).
Basically, the films only indicate whether they are suitable for underfloor heating, but not their thermal resistance. Finding this out is also quite difficult, so always ask the manufacturer if necessary.
