Rubber under floating floor

arathercoolguy · Post by **arathercoolguy** » Mon Nov 10, 2003 11:51 am

This might be a long shot and I apologize if it's already been suggested. Instead of buying noeprene pads to go under a floating floor, what if I was to use 1" rubber hose nailed or screwed to the bottom? I could use 6" lengths all throughout the floating floor bottom.

Any thoughts?

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Mon Nov 10, 2003 12:35 pm

The hose itself shouldn't be a problem, other than finding out how much weight per surface area it takes to compress it between 15% and maybe 75% of its thickness. That might be tricky.

The possible problem would be if you didn't sink whatever fasteners you use deep enough so that the hose could compress enough to cause the floor frame to rest on the fastener instead of the hose - this would "short out" the hose, and leave you with a solid connected floor (in other words, a NON-floating floor)

Your idea might work reasonably well if you were to ONLY fasten the hose on both SIDES of your floor framing members, (hose running at 90 degrees to framing member) and maybe use two flattened pieces of hose layered on top of each other for each support point. That would give close to 1/2" of rubber between frame and subfloor.

You're in N. California, another possibility is horse mats. They're usually a little thick, but if you can find some that are only about 1/2" thick why not?

Have you read my explanations of floating here?

http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 39&start=0

Any resilient material can be used to float a floor, as long as you remember that a spring is NOT a spring if it's at either end of its travel - That's what the weight testing thing is all about... Steve

arathercoolguy · Post by **arathercoolguy** » Mon Nov 10, 2003 1:42 pm

Steve, I understand what you're saying about the fasteners and the "shorting out" bit. If I was to use 2 peices together similar to a double barrel shotgun one on top of the other fastened to the bottom of the wood by twine, would that be better? The reason I'm pestering you about the hose is that I have a ton of it laying around.

Thanks,
John

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Nov 11, 2003 3:28 am

I'd use pieces of it that were 8" long, pulled crosswise of the wood and flattened (in the middle) as you pull the ends of the hose up the sides of the floor joists and nail or screw the ends in place, so that there's no fastener across the bottom contact surface.

If you "pre-pad" the joists, you could hold the hose flat in place with one of those Vise-Grip Swivel Pad clamps vertically, and a second clamp holding the ends of the hose clamped to the sides of the 2x4 firmly while attaching the fasteners.

You could probably even put a bead of construction adhesive under/between layers on the sides to help keep things in place, although that would slow down the process. I would put washers under the heads of fasteners to keep them from pulling through the hose. #12 sheet metal screws should work with 1/4" washers... Steve