One of the biggest difficulties with apartment life is being able to hear the people that live above and below you. When hunting for a new apartment, it can be helpful to know how the building’s flooring will affect this. So, can you hear your neighbors when the floors are made of concrete or have concrete underneath them?
It is usually impossible to hear neighbors through concrete floors. Because concrete has a very high material density, airborne sound isn’t really able to travel through it. Impact sounds such as footsteps or moving furniture, however, can sometimes be heard through concrete.
However, there is more to the issue of sound traveling through concrete than meets the eye. Depending on the type of concrete your floor is made of, the story could be very different.
How Sound Travels Through Floors?
Sound consists of a series of vibrations that send waves of energy through the air or other matter. Our brains and ears usually detect sound through the air.
Even if the thing we’re listening to is very close to our ears, such as a headphone or a seashell, we usually pick up these vibrations through the medium of the air inside of our ear canals.
This is relevant because when a sound wave does hit solid matter, there are two things that it can do. It can either bounce off, or it can go through. Our ears work by letting the sound go through, causing our eardrums to vibrate and sending that information to the brain.
Sound can sometimes do a combination of these two things instead, with part of the wave continuing through the new material and part of it bouncing off.
When sound hits a material that is not very dense, such as wood, it will usually transfer the energy from the wave in the air into that material. This makes walls and floors made of these materials pretty bad at stopping sound from getting through.
Concrete, on the other hand, is incredibly dense. Because of this, when a sound hits it from the air it will usually just bounce off unless it is extremely loud.
This makes concrete floors, walls, and ceilings ideal for keeping out noise from the neighbors, whether they’re watching television or arguing about money.
However, sound doesn’t come from nothing. In order for a sound to be created, an object needs to vibrate. Concrete is great at stopping sounds that originate from somewhere else, like a stereo or a chihuahua, but when the concrete itself is the thing generating the sound, it tends to go right through.
This means that whenever a large or heavy object strikes the concrete, causing it to vibrate, this sound will be easily audible on the lower floor.
If you’re only worried about people below you, it is unlikely that this will ever cause any problems. People don’t tend to punch their ceilings very often. However, this can be a bit of a pain when people live above you.
Exceptions
Before we move on to what you can do to mitigate impact noise, there are some situations in which concrete flooring can let sound through. The first is when the floor in question isn’t fully concrete.
Some concrete floors are made using a technique that molds the concrete so that it is mostly hollow aside from what is necessary to keep it structurally sound.
This technique saves contractors money but ruins the sound-stopping qualities of the concrete. This concrete needs to be treated the same way wooden floors would be when thinking about soundproofing.
Gaps or holes in the construction can also let sound in from upper or lower floors. This can happen because of flaws in the building or because of radiator pipes and other multi-floor necessities. These allow the sound to travel easily through the air to get to you.
If you’re hearing sounds from a different floor even though you have concrete floors and ceilings, you can follow these steps to figure out what the problem is:
- What kinds of sounds are they? If they are primarily thumps and thuds, the floor is probably fine, and you should probably suggest to your upstairs/downstairs neighbors to get a carpet or stop punching their ceiling.
- Can the sounds be heard throughout the apartment, or are they localized to one room? If they can be heard everywhere, the floors are probably hollow. In this case, you can soundproof using a combination of mass-loaded vinyl and carpet. If they can only be heard in one room, they are probably being caused by a structural issue. In this case, you will have to find the place where the sound is coming from and apply some kind of sound blocker there.
How to Soundproof Concrete Floors?
Because concrete already reflects most sounds rather than letting them pass through, Not a lot of soundproofing needs to be done to keep the neighbor’s noise from becoming your problem.
Instead, you can focus on softening impacts with the concrete to prevent impact noises from occurring in the first place.
Unfortunately, unless you own the room above yours, this might be something that you have to discuss with your landlord. However, you can take care of any noise that you might be making on your own for your downstairs neighbors the same way, which they might appreciate.
If your landlord’s a jerk who won’t help with your problems, you might be able to prevent some of that upstairs noise by building a dropped ceiling.
This involves building a second, slightly lower ceiling underneath the one that you already have. This can stop impact noises by creating a layer of space for those sounds to bounce around before they would get to you.
If you find that this doesn’t work, you can also try soundproofing the walls, which can sometimes carry sounds from upstairs into your apartment if they aren’t also concrete. adding something to increase their density like mass-loaded vinyl might help stop vibrations from coming through.
Finally, you might try soundproofing your windows, which if your neighbors frequently leave their windows open might be the reason that sound is leaking through into your apartment.
