hello,
i’m building a house with second floor laundry and a front loading washer. what are some design ideas for minimizing vibration of the whole house while this washer operates? nothing is build yet, so its a great time to figure out how to design this right!
i’ve heard about beefing up the floor below, and using rubber pads. any other ideas?
Replies
A nice solid I joist floor, glued and screwed. We have a second floor laundry and don't have the wobbles. I highly recomend checking out floodsaver.com for a pan floor cover.
Check out the laundry room location thread in General discussion for more info.
Have a good day
Cliffy
Edited 4/18/2008 7:20 pm ET by cliffy
I live in a 1900's balloon frame. The washer is on the third floor attic space. The whole house oscillates when it spins!
Why take the fun out of it?
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making lemonade out of lemons, good attitude!
I'm sensitive to movement. Bad side to it is I get motion sick pretty easy sometimes.
For a real hoot you gotts be in this place when we get a real howler. You can feel it rolling around.
Funny though, no big cracks in the plaster and it is well built and feels solid.[email protected]
At the local plumbing wholesaler, in the AC department, they will have some small pads of cork sandwiched in two layers of rubber. Put one under each leg.
FWIW, I usually discuss laundry room location with customers. Yeah, that's where most of the laundry comes from, but the laundry is usually done between other chores. After they give it some thought, a chute is usually installed and the laundry room is placed off the kitchen.
I have a 2nd floor laundry. With the conventional top load machine the whole house shook in the spin cycle. I got a front load machine that was well balanced and had better internal mounts. No more problems.
Some front loaders that have specific info in their install instructions call for a 80 or 100 PSF (or even more) floor under the install location. Start at the framing stage - er... OK start with the house plans... Most floors are rated at around 50 or 60 PSF... So, my recommendation is install a coupla of extra joists under the washer area, and maybe an extra layer of floor sheathing in the laundry room and make very sure everything is glued and screwed very well. If there is anyway you can reduce the joist span in that area, it would be even better.
I've been through this with home buyers before....
IIRC, a 4" mortar bed is not out of the question for an upstairs washing machine.
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
If your hair looks funny, it's because God likes to scratch his nuts. You nut, you.