When you are irritated by your upstairs neighbours this can occur due to contact noise (foot step noise, drum noise) and/or air-noise (talking, television).The measurements to be taken strongly depend on what kind of material the floor is made of. So we offer separate solutions for wooden and concrete floors.

When there are wooden floors between dwellings, the best results are achieved when your upstairs neighbour takes the measures. This measure differs for contact and air noise:

Contact noise
Footsteps cause contact noise. The best measure in order to reduce walking noise in the form of contact noise is the loose coupling of the floor which is walked on. So, the footsteps are transferred less effectively to the construction. On a wooden floor it is not good to use thick Agglomer; it is better to get the thickness of 10mm (for parquet). You lay this layer directly on your wooden floor. Over this you lay your deck floor.

Tip: When you use a carpet (which you can lay directly on the Agglomer) the contact noise is lower than for a parquet or a laminate.

Air Noise
With a wooden floor often there is nuisance noise from air noise. Here are two causes:

- through low mass (e.g. 20 cm concrete floor) and a high rigidity a wooden floor has an insufficient ability to stop noise;
- noise penetrates through gaps between the planks and joins against the partitions (noise cracks).

In order to stop the air noise plates of noise insulation material must be glued on the floor. We advise the application of Isomat 14. These smooth, artificial plates have a high mass of 14 kg/m2. With this the mass and so also the noise insulation of the floor is doubled without increasing its rigidity.

By connecting the plates firmly to each other and against the partitions (possible sealing paste) all noise cracks are sealed and the noise insulation improves. From this improvements of 8 to 10 dB(A) are achieved. Under normal conditions there are no more obstacles between the plates.

With a concrete floor, it is almost always a case of contact noise. When irritation occurs from air noise it concerns neighbours who turn up their stereos loud or make very loud music. The only solution here is for your neighbour to make a sound studio.

When you are irritated by contact noise the its best for the measure to be taken by your upstairs neighbour. Here are diverse possibilities:

Heavy Contact noise (e.g. drum / piano playing)
The most extreme solution is the loose coupling of the floor with Agglomer plates (Floating Floor, 30mm thick). This is necessary for a high degree of contact noise (e.g. drum / piano playing). When it is clearly shown one source of noise it is not necessary to decouple the whole bottom; a floating floor under the source is more than sufficient.

With this solution you apply the Agglomer plates (floating floor, 30mm thick) directly on the building floor. Above this there are 2 Multiplex layers. These must be connected to each other (glued and/or screwed), with the seams staggered facing downwards. These plates of Multiplex can't have any direct contact with the existing floor and partition; for that a contact bridge is inserted.

To connect the contract bridge with the partition you can make use of Agglomer (Stripes). The finished floor /carpet can then be laid over the Multiplex plates.

Light Contact noise
When you already have a sufficiently insulated floor, but you still have irritation of footstep on hard floor noise (parquet) . Then you can use Agglomer (Parquet). You lay this between the building floor and finished floor. This is only 10mm thick in this way there is a less dramatic change than the previously mentioned solution.