Ground Floors
Ground bearing floors can include insulation either below or above the concrete slab, depending on the choice of the designer. If the insulation is installed below the slab, this increases the thermal capacity of the building, helping to maintain steady internal temperatures.
If insulation is installed above the slab, the building will respond much more quickly to the heating system. Suspended floors are usually insulated in such a way that they offer reduced thermal mass and respond quickly to the heating system.
Exposed Soffit Floors
It is possible to achieve very high levels of thermal insulation in exposed upper floors. The designer has a choice of where to position the insulation: for concrete floors, either above or below the floor, or for timber joist floors, between the joists.
If insulating below the structural floor, the insulation can be laminated to a variety of materials thus the floor can be insulated and finished in one process.
Insulating above the structural floor reduces the thermal mass of the floor allowing for fast warm up..
Separating Floors
Mineral wool products offer substantial advantages when used as both sound absorbent and resilient layers in floors that are required to provide sound insulation.
Mineral wool provides an alternative method of controlling airborne sound transmission through a floor as opposed to simply increasing the mass. The sound reduction performance of floors can be greatly increased by installing a layer of glass or rock mineral wool in floor voids to absorb energy from airborne sound waves.
Internal Floors
The overwhelming concern of the designer when considering the internal floors of a dwelling is to ensure that the floor has the ability to support the dead and live loads that will be applied to it in the context of the whole structure of the building.
Building Regulations determine the minimum standards for structure and fire resistance. Another important consideration is the spatial separation that the floors provide within a dwelling in both acoustic and thermal terms.