“Good fences make good neighbors”, so the saying goes. In a loft building, sound resistant walls serve the same function. Roebling Lofts is built to be as quiet as possible, taking advantage of old-fashioned strength, and high-tech wizardry.
It starts with a factory-grade subfloor: 3″ thick timbers (4 layers x 3/4″ of solid Douglas Fir) ensure massive carrying capacity with no sagging.
Wood subfloors are then covered with 2 layers of rubber sound insulation
Here’s a closeup of a single rubber pad layer
Workmen pouring two inches of heavy gypsum concrete (“gypcrete”) that floats on top of the padding. The heavy layer is hard to vibrate to begin with, and is dampened by the padding underneath.
Here’s a Manhattan Unit with newly poured gypcrete subfloor. Strand-woven bamboo will finiish.
A corner Otis unit with newly poured gypcrete
Mineral wool sound insulation is placed within the demising walls. It’s a world-class sound insulator, and is also fire retardant and water resistant.
Every demising wall has sound bars for attaching the sheetrock. The soundbars vibrate feely within the clips, and the clip attachments are dampened by red, rubber pads, greatly reducing transmission across units.
Here’s a view of the demising wall showing the mineral wool in situ, and the sound bar: left side is a different unit.
