Stopping gym noise and vibration in apartments and hotels

A gym in a multi-storey building has neighbours: apartments below, hotel rooms next door, offices or shops underneath. The most common complaint isn't music. It's the thud of a dropped dumbbell, which carries through the concrete structure and shows up as noise and vibration rooms away. Once the gym is open, it's expensive to fix. Designed in early, it's very manageable.

Why ordinary gym flooring isn't enough

A dropped weight sends a burst of energy into the floor. Some of it is absorbed by the rubber. The rest travels into the slab and through the building as structure-borne noise. A standard rubber floor protects the slab and cuts some impact noise, but on its own it can't stop heavy drops reaching the rooms below.

To do that, the gym floor has to be decoupled from the structure, with layers that act like springs and dampers between the weights and the slab.

Acoustic system floors

Acoustic gym floors are built from layers with spring and damping properties, designed to reduce structure-borne noise and vibration. They're made for gyms in mixed-use buildings and 24/7 gyms. Published test results for the systems we specify show peak sound level reductions like these:

• 45 mm build-up: 22 dB reduction.

• 58 mm build-up: 25 dB reduction.

• 70 mm build-up: 30 dB reduction.

• 83 mm build-up: 36 dB reduction.

• 90 mm build-up: 42 dB reduction.

The pattern is simple: more build-up height buys more reduction. That's why the decision needs to be made while floor levels are still being set.

There are no standardised tests that reflect real gym conditions, so the better manufacturers test with their own drop towers, dropping weights the way they're dropped in a gym.

What it looks like in practice

• A hotel gym above suites. Hotels have put gyms directly above guest suites using a system floor laid without a screed, with rubber on top.
• A gym above offices and shops. Commercial gyms have been built over offices and retail by decoupling a floating screed from the slab, with rubber flooring on top.

Bring the acoustic engineer and us in early

The right system depends on:

• what will be dropped, and from what height
• the slab and structure
• what's below and beside the gym, and the acoustic targets the building has to meet
• how much build-up height is available, which affects door thresholds and finished floor levels.

We work with the architect, the builder and the acoustic engineer to choose a system that meets the targets, then plan the zones so the heaviest impact areas get the most protection. Lighter zones such as cardio and stretching don't always need the full system. That keeps cost down.

Not only floors

How the gym is used matters too. Dumbbell racks with rubber-lined cradles, bumper plates in lifting areas, and house rules on dropping weights all help. Treadmills and other cardio equipment can also transmit vibration, so they should sit on suitable flooring.

Planning a gym in an apartment, hotel or mixed-use building? LUXGYM specifies, supplies and installs acoustic flooring systems. See For architects and builders, Hotel and apartment gyms that residents actually use, or get in touch.