Early morning spinning - how to make sure you don't wake up the family?

[Pierre]

Hi,
I'm a big fan of getting the indoor training over with as early as possible. I'm usually on the bike at about 5:30am. I've taken to using earphones to listen to Coach Troy and Robbie Ventura to keep the noise down but my wife has given me "feedback" lately that she can hear the bike noise - especially if I'm dong reps where I have to back off and then ramp it up (not like I can really avoid those...). I've got two thin cyclops mats on the ground overtop of some fake-wood flooring which rests on concrete. Any good ideas on how to keep the vibrations down to reduce overall noise levels aside from soundproofing room, moving outside, running instead of spinning, getting the wife up to join me?

[AngryScientist]

get a white noise machine for the bedroom. they work wonders to drown out annoying sounds, and once you get used to the "white noise", you can sleep through practically anything.

[Pierre]

Damn - that's not a bad idea. Thanks!

[JAGI410]

There's an app for that :) Try it on your device first before investing cash in a nicer one.

[azrider]

get a white noise machine for the bedroom. they work wonders to drown out annoying sounds, and once you get used to the "white noise", you can sleep through practically anything.

this.

try the Marpac. We love ours.

http://www.marpac.com/media/Site%20Files/Merchandising%20Files/dohm-ds-info.jpg

[Anarchist]

Got a garage?

[EDS]

Hi,
I'm a big fan of getting the indoor training over with as early as possible. I'm usually on the bike at about 5:30am. I've taken to using earphones to listen to Coach Troy and Robbie Ventura to keep the noise down but my wife has given me "feedback" lately that she can hear the bike noise - especially if I'm dong reps where I have to back off and then ramp it up (not like I can really avoid those...). I've got two thin cyclops mats on the ground overtop of some fake-wood flooring which rests on concrete. Any good ideas on how to keep the vibrations down to reduce overall noise levels aside from soundproofing room, moving outside, running instead of spinning, getting the wife up to join me?

Try: (i) floor, (ii) mat, (iii) wood/fake-wood, (iv) mat.

Is the basement an option? That is what I have to do.

[gospastic]

What kind of trainer?

[thwart]

Got a garage?

Yep.

Perfect for not disturbing others, but having tried this AM, not 'effective' at an ambient temp of -22 F.

Or maybe it was the user that wasn't 'effective'...

[Anarchist]

Yep.

Perfect for not disturbing others, but having tried this AM, not 'effective' at an ambient temp of -22 F.

Or maybe it was the user that wasn't 'effective'...

I need to build one of those little stools for beside my rollers.

[bargainguy]

Bizarre idea: Get an old Spenco gel saddle pad - the Sorbothane kind from the 70'/80's that's about an inch thick - and cut pieces to put under your trainer for isolation. That's how I got my washing machine to stop "walking" around the floor, by isolating all the feet.

[Pierre]

What kind of trainer?

Cyclos Fluid2...it's a quiet trainer AND I'm in the basement. Alas, no garage. She's a light sleeper. I'm going to look into the white noise gizmo. We live near an expressway so there may be other benefits to having that set up.

[Pierre]

Bizarre idea: Get an old Spenco gel saddle pad - the Sorbothane kind from the 70'/80's that's about an inch thick - and cut pieces to put under your trainer for isolation. That's how I got my washing machine to stop "walking" around the floor, by isolating all the feet.

Classic saddle - good idea. i'm curious about whether more padding under the trainer would reduce vibrations. I'll see if I have any spenco-like items around the house.

[MattTuck]

My trainer is all set up for me today. I expect I'll soon find out how thin the floors are in my new place. With a neighbor below me, I don't think I'll be doing any 5:30am sprint workouts.

[cachagua]

Wasn't the white noise idea was first pioneered by Hunter Thompson? There's a passage in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" where he wedges the TV between two channels, turns the volume up full-blast, and crawls under the covers. . .

Don't need a better recommendation than that.

(Off-topic: just looked at the Wikipedia page for "colors of sound", and it's fascinating. They say that due to bias the human hearing, something called gray noise is perceived as having equal loudness at all frequencies, to a greater extent than white noise. Presumably the really desirable noise generators are tunable?)

For me it's easy -- my gf would sleep through an earthquake.

[Nooch]

My trainer is all set up for me today. I expect I'll soon find out how thin the floors are in my new place. With a neighbor below me, I don't think I'll be doing any 5:30am sprint workouts.

I recently moved as well, into a two family, owner-occupied house. The landlord hasn't lived below anyone before, and has already made a bunch of noise complaints to me -- my wife vacuumed in the middle of the day on christmas eve, while their son was napping, and they claimed it disrupted their quality of life.

I've been really concerned about riding indoors, but I need to do something, so I decided on these 1" thick 'MMA' floor tiles (http://www.foamtiles.com/tiles/1-jumbo-soft-tiles.html) to put under the rollers. I got 20 square feet, which should allow me to do 2'x5' for the rollers, and then double it, so two inches of padding between me and them. I'm really hoping this works. (I'll also keep it in the laundry room, so as to give the illusion that I'm really just doing laundry for an hour every night...)

[josephr]

I recently moved as well, into a two family, owner-occupied house. The landlord hasn't lived below anyone before, and has already made a bunch of noise complaints to me -- my wife vacuumed in the middle of the day on christmas eve, while their son was napping, and they claimed it disrupted their quality of life.



find a new place and move...now...its not going to get better. We've owned some apartments in the past. Folks coming from non-apartment living environments became the 'complainers' over every little noise. Some would adjust, others would just complain louder until we were happy to see them go. Since your landlord is the owner, you're in a no-win situation. Just my two-cents.
Joe

[Nooch]

find a new place and move...now...its not going to get better. We've owned some apartments in the past. Folks coming from non-apartment living environments became the 'complainers' over every little noise. Some would adjust, others would just complain louder until we were happy to see them go. Since your landlord is the owner, you're in a no-win situation. Just my two-cents.
Joe

I wish it were that easy -- in the second month of an 18 month lease, and expecting our second child shortly (April) -- Moving again isn't going to happen, and I'd venture we'd be hard pressed to find something with the same space in a similar price range... Just going to ride it out, and work to put ourselves in the position to purchase at the end of the lease term.

I've spoken with them in person -- i think we're back on solid ground. They happened to have some loud company over until 1:30 am a few short days after their christmas eve complaint -- they seem to have realized that they screwed up complaining about vacuuming...

but, I need to ride, so I'm going to figure this out. Any thoughts if a 1/2 inch piece of plywood between the two 1" layer mat layers would help my cause, or is it unnecessary?

edit: sorry for the hijack!!

[rwsaunders]

Yep.

Perfect for not disturbing others, but having tried this AM, not 'effective' at an ambient temp of -22 F.

Or maybe it was the user that wasn't 'effective'...

Tom...you're just trying to keep up with Spider-Man so you can win the "Midwest cyclist who braves the elements" award.

[thwart]

Tom...you're just trying to keep up with Spider-Man so you can win the "Midwest cyclist who braves the elements" award.


Methinks it's the 'most bike-obsessed in the cold' award.

And he's got me beat, going away.

Whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure.

[Peter P.]

You've already got a fluid trainer. Good.

Your problem is not sound but vibration.

Is the wood floor directly on the concrete or is there a framework underneath? If not directly on concrete, the trainer is causing the wood floor to resonate. You have to damp the the floor to keep it from vibrating.

Can you place the trainer directly on the concrete?

Can you place your trainer farther away from where your wife is sleeping?

Another possible cause of the vibration reaching your wife could be duct work and a forced hot air heating system. Again, you'll have to damp the mass of the sheet metal. You'll need something denser than insulation to do this.

A third source of the noise reaching upstairs could be a thin door from the basement to the living space. A heavier, "deader" door is the answer.

If your basement has exposed ceiling joists, then it's time to insulate and install the heaviest sheetrock possible.

Mass and damping are the 2 methods you'll use to cure your problem. Noise machines-I never liked that idea when I'd prefer to solve the problem at its source.

Go to soundproofing.org (http://soundproofing.org/) and read more on what you'll need to cure your problem. I went through this trying to silence my trainer and got quite an education in the process. You'll likely need to implement more than one method to be successful. The site even mentions Kurt Kinetic trainers (http://soundproofing.org/sales/vibrationpads.htm), but my experience has been you need a multi-layer approach for the most success such as the floating floor tiles (tiles under both the front wheel and the trainer base) stacked with the lead sheeting, some driveway pavers, and the cork sandwich anti-vibration pads.

Nooch: as far as your problem goes, plywood is not dead enough for your application. What you could do is layer the lead lined mat (see the soundproofing.org web site above) with plywood, but you're truly going to need more than one layer of each, and certainly several-think of a multi-layered sandwich. If you add a layer of sheetrock, then the dissimilar materials-lead mat/plywood/sheetrock-can cause frequency cancellations that work together to absorb vibration better than just one layer of one material. Honestly, if you could line the floor of the room you train in with driveway pavers, that would be a good start.

A helpful tool is to download a soundmeter app for your smartphone if you have one. See if you can ride and measure the before and after treatment sound levels. A 10dB reduction is a good target.

If anyone wants my old materials to play with, I think I still have them. I'll give them to you for just the price of shipping. PM me.

[pinkshogun]

in between stations on a radio makes for delightful 'white noise' too

[Nooch]

You've already got a fluid trainer. Good.

Your problem is not sound but vibration.

Is the wood floor directly on the concrete or is there a framework underneath? If not directly on concrete, the trainer is causing the wood floor to resonate. You have to damp the the floor to keep it from vibrating.

Can you place the trainer directly on the concrete?

Can you place your trainer farther away from where your wife is sleeping?

Another possible cause of the vibration reaching your wife could be duct work and a forced hot air heating system. Again, you'll have to damp the mass of the sheet metal. You'll need something denser than insulation to do this.

A third source of the noise reaching upstairs could be a thin door from the basement to the living space. A heavier, "deader" door is the answer.

If your basement has exposed ceiling joists, then it's time to insulate and install the heaviest sheetrock possible.

Mass and damping are the 2 methods you'll use to cure your problem. Noise machines-I never liked that idea when I'd prefer to solve the problem at its source.

Go to soundproofing.org (http://soundproofing.org/) and read more on what you'll need to cure your problem. I went through this trying to silence my trainer and got quite an education in the process. You'll likely need to implement more than one method to be successful. The site even mentions Kurt Kinetic trainers (http://soundproofing.org/sales/vibrationpads.htm), but my experience has been you need a multi-layer approach for the most success such as the floating floor tiles (tiles under both the front wheel and the trainer base) stacked with the lead sheeting, some driveway pavers, and the cork sandwich anti-vibration pads.

Nooch: as far as your problem goes, plywood is not dead enough for your application. What you could do is layer the lead lined mat (see the soundproofing.org web site above) with plywood, but you're truly going to need more than one layer of each, and certainly several-think of a multi-layered sandwich. If you add a layer of sheetrock, then the dissimilar materials-lead mat/plywood/sheetrock-can cause frequency cancellations that work together to absorb vibration better than just one layer of one material. Honestly, if you could line the floor of the room you train in with driveway pavers, that would be a good start.

A helpful tool is to download a soundmeter app for your smartphone if you have one. See if you can ride and measure the before and after treatment sound levels. A 10dB reduction is a good target.

If anyone wants my old materials to play with, I think I still have them. I'll give them to you for just the price of shipping. PM me.

That's some heavy duty stuff, lol. The room i'm working on is also the laundry room, so ultimately the goal is to just make the same amount of noise/vibration that the washer and dryer make.. and since those sit directly on the floor, i figure anything i do will be better than nothing..

[Scott Shire]

"Well, babe, if it's keeping you up we can't have that. I'll sell the thing tomorrow."

Done.

Replace with fatbike and pogies, everyone wins.