Sound insulating dovetailed sheet floor

Existing floor constructions in older commercial buildings and houses are often made of wood. In the case of major repairs, renovation, restoration or a change in the function of such building, it often appears that these floor constructions do not meet the current requirements for sound insulation. LEWIS^® Dovetailed sheeting makes it possible to create a lightweight sound insulating floating floor on top of the existing wooden or steel frame floor construction.

Sound insulation requirements

The government usually sets minimal requirements for airborne and impact sound insulation between rooms inside buildings. If the underlying construction consists of wooden beams or a lightweight steel frame construction, a lightweight additional floor surface will be necessary. Using a thin and therefore relatively light LEWIS^® sound insulating (floating) floor, the desired sound insulation values can virtually always be realised.

Compartment floor

Generally, a simple standard LEWIS^® floor (type LWS-B0) amply meets the sound insulation requirements for compartment floors. With the LEWIS^® LWS-B0 construction, LEWIS^® sound-insulating rock wool resilient strips are applied onto the floor wood at the spots of the wooden beams.

The LEWIS^® Dovetailed metal decking is applied at right angles to the beams. Using LEWIS^® rock wool side strips, the LEWIS^® sheet floor is kept free from the rising work around. A layer of 34 mm fine gravel concrete or liquid screed is applied onto the Dovetailed metal sheeting. Underneath the dovetailed metal sheet floor, a 12.5 mm thick fibreglass-reinforced plaster board ceiling will suffice. This construction realises a performance of airborne sound Rw 55 and impact sound Ln 49.

Flexibility of Construction Variants

LEWIS^® metal deck floor constructions are constructed flexibly based on a floating LEWIS^® composite steel deck sheeting. Thus, a solution can be offered for virtually every construction and sound requirement. The performance of 17 LEWIS^® floor construction variants has been established in a lab or by measurements in practice. An overview of these construction variants and their corresponding insulation values is available. By adjusting one or more of the variables in the LEWIS^® floor construction, such as support material, cavity insulation and the thickness of fine gravel concrete or liquid screed for example, further improvements can be realised.

Resilient strips

LEWIS ^® rock wool resilient strips are applied to LEWIS^® sound insulating floors as support materials by default. If the centre-to-centre distance is greater than 800 mm and/or the use load is greater than 2.5 kN/m2, then we would advise to apply LEWIS^® rubber granulate or LEWIS^® Sylomer TSS resilient strips.