Bedroom carpets

hethmar

My son has a flat with laminated floors throughout. The person living in the flat below has suddenly started complaining about the noise when he walks around his bedroom (after 5 years!!). To placate her he is going to have a carpet laid in there. What sort would be best to give some sound proofing please and what sort of price are we to think about.

beaker141

He's not just started wearing high heals has he :-)

I would say get the thickest underlay possible, I often see "cloud 9" mentioned.

hethmar

LOL, perhaps he hasnt told me.

Is that something easily available and not too expensive?

mexicanwaver

I think if you're going to lay carpet down then underlay is not an issue....just having the soft surface instead of the laminate flooring will make all the difference.

If you want added noise insulation and a softer/bouncier walk, then by all means add the underlay as well. But it may be going overboard if you're just looking to placate the neighbour.

baby_fuzz

can he get away with not wearing shoes when he's in the house? that would be a lot cheaper than re-laying a floor.

sarah_elton

hethmar wrote: »

LOL, perhaps he hasnt told me.

Is that something easily available and not too expensive?

Any carpet shop will be able to supply underlay with the carpet if you want it.

hethmar

Unfortunately he has to move shortly due to his work and will be renting the flat to two friends. A girl will be having his bedroom but he thinks it wise to sort this out before he goes. Personally I think the woman downstairs is a loony as she complained he was using a hoover at 10.30 p.m. one night when he was actually working away and no one was in the flat. She seems to have become fixated with every little noise but hopefully if he can say he has done this it may stop her bothering the tenants.

hethmar

So do we think cheapish foam backed bedroom carpet would be sufficient to muffle nosie?

eilidh_s

When I was in university we lived in the top floor of a wee block of flats and after a couple of months e woman beneath us started to complain about the same thing. We mentioned it to the land lord and he said she had been living down there for years and had never complained before so we just assumed it was our spiky shoes and went barefoot in the flat but the complaints didn't stop and one day she put a letter through our door complaining about the noise that had been going on all weekend only we had gone to my flatmates parents house in another city for the weekend so we figured something else was going on. After a bit of investigation we found out that the pipes in her flat had started knocking due to a bit of an airlock or something but since it was high up she had assumed it was us!

I know its not really relevant but if it took your lady years before she stared complaining it could be worth doing some further investigation before you start shelling out on carpets and underlay and stuff.

PasturesNew

To be fair, my upstairs neighbour has laminate and it drives me mental. Anyway, up there it's now on its 3rd tenant and I managed to catch this one as she was moving in.

Then she dropped something off to me this week when there was an electrician upstairs and I let her hear him as he walked across the floor and her face was a picture. Gobsmacked is the word. She couldn't believe that it could EVER have been that noisy! She'd never heard such a noise transmitted through a ceiling. It was loud. MUCH louder than she could ever have guessed.

In some cases, the noise from a laminate floor above can be excruciatingly loud. Where the original build was never meant to have laminate and years ago people had THICK underlay and THICK carpets.

My friend, on the other hand, living in a newer block than me, can't hear a thing from upstairs, even though he has a family living up there. I've been in his flat when they've been upstairs moving about (can hear 1/1000th of the noise if I REALLY listened). So I know it's not just me being picky.

It's taken me over a year to get round to mentioning it to an upstairs tenant. Sometimes I just used to go outside for half an hour. The last one would come in at 3am and be moving about until 3.30am, so I'd sit outside.

It was a major part of the reason I gave up a job a year ago, because the tenants before were getting up at 5am and moving about until 7.30am and I wasn't getting enough sleep to feel up to working the next day.

I think the one here now has put some rugs down, there's still creaking and banging and noises, but a bit less.

Broadsword

The difference is between carpet and laminate rather than resulting from the quality of underlay and/or carpet. Any carpet (even cheapo with a foam back) will make the required difference and eliminate the noise