Environmentally/human health safe underlayment suggestions for radiant heat and engineered wood floor?
Hi Everyone,
I’m installing engineered hardwood flooring on a wood subfloor with staple up radiant floor tubing below (with heat transfer plates). I’d like to do half of the flooring as floating because there is living space below and I want to reduce noise transfer. For the other half of the floor, I’m fine with nail down as noise reduction is not important.
We have a fresh few day old newborn, so I want to choose the best underlayment option for human health (as it will be heated from the radiant) and also the most environmentally friendly option with the lowest R value to not block the heat transfer. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance,
Ali
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Replies
Hi there,
First off for air quality remember your filtration, humidity % in the home and air changes per hr.
With that out of the way, what type of underlayment were you considering? I dont have the question down pat, however assuming you mean a sub floor or to raise the floor, you could use a gypcrete or thin layer of plywood.
Just insulate below the radiant staple up to a greater level then the resistance above and the heat will flow in the path of least resistance.
Moe Hirsch
"generally" staple up runs higher water temperature than tube above the subfloor. If you used a system with the tube above the subfloor, 'generally' you could run lower water temperatures, the subfloor would not be as hot and there would be less chance of off gassing.
Ali,
I've tried a number of ways of dealing with noise through floors.
Floating floor help very little with noise. Despite the big numbers on the package, the only noise they stop is the ticking noise from pets walking. Everything else comes through about the same. It does absolutely ZERO for heel strike noise or ambient sound transfer. Most of this stuff is designed for 6" concrete floors where it makes a real difference.
About the only thing I've found that helps with footfall noise is 1" of rigid mineral wool with floating subfloor above it. This only helps, doesn't eliminate it.