A Floating Floor is a floor that does not need to be nailed or glued to the subfloor. The term floating floor refers to the installation method, but is often used synonymously with laminate flooring in a domestic context.
A sprung floor is a special type of floating floor designed to enhance sports or dance performance. In general though the term refers to a floor used to reduce noise or vibration.
A domestic floating floor might be constructed over a subfloor or even over an existing floor. It can consist of a glass fibre, felt or cork layer for sound insulation with neoprene pads holding up a laminate floor. There is a gap between the floor and the walls to decouple them and allow for expansion, this gap is covered with skirting boards or mouldings.
Floating floors as used in sound studios can be either just larger versions of the domestic variety, or much larger constructions with slabs of concrete to keep the resonance frequency down. The manufacture of integrated circuits uses massive floating floors with hundreds of tons in weight of concrete to avoid vibration affecting mask alignment.
Floating floors are one of the requirements for the THX high-fidelity sound reproduction standard for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems.
The supporting structure underneath flooring is called a sub-floor. Sometimes, as for earthen floors, there is no separate structure. The subfloor may also provide services like underfloor heating or ducts for air conditioning.
A ground-level floor can be an earthen floor made of soil, or be solid ground floors made of concrete slab. Floors above may be built on beams or joists or use structures like hollow core slabs.
Ground floor construction
Ground-level slab floors are prepared for pouring by grading the base material so that it is flat, and then spreading a layer of sand and gravel. A grid of rebar is usually added to reinforce the concrete, especially if it will be used structurally, i.e. to support part of the building.
Upper floor construction
Floors in woodframe homes are usually constructed with joists that are centered no more than 16 inches or 40 centimeters apart, according to most building codes.[citation needed] Heavy floors, such as those made of stone, are more closely-spaced. If the span between load-bearing walls is too long for joists to safely support, then a heavy crossbeam (thick or laminated wood, or a metal I-beam or H-beam) may have to be used. A 'subfloor' of plywood or waferboard is then laid over the joists.
