Isolating Floating Floors for Studios, BBC Broadcasting House – Cardiff
Mason UK secured the contract to provide acoustic floating floors for the new BBC building in central Cardiff. This was a large, logistically challenging job that required floors to be installed on every floor from the basement up to the third floor. Overall, this project required in excess of 1,500m2 of floating floors.
This project included many different types of rooms, from recording studios and practice rooms, to large radio and TV studios. The largest TV studio on the ground floor called for a powerfloated finish, a large sweeping curved edge and an air gap of a staggering 170mm. Mason UK were able to meet these requirements and make last minute amendments to the floor edges as the architect’s plans changed. This was possible due to the flexibility of the jack-up system and would have been much harder to achieve with a traditional formwork system.
In addition to the studios on the above ground floors, Mason UK were also contracted to install floating floors to support two large Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supply (DRUPS) units. These are large, heavy machines that are designed to kick into operation within milliseconds of a power outage. Due to the machines’ size and high levels of vibration, the floors were 225mm thick and jacked-up to achieve a 120mm air gap.
The site occupies a relatively small area right in the heart of central Cardiff and as such the project presented many logistical challenges that we were able to overcome with careful planning and clear coordination with both the principal contractor and other contractors on site.
See below for construction photos.
Construction Photographs
Products Related to Article
The Mason FSN Jack-Up acoustic floor system can be used as the crucial part of achieving box in box construction for studios or rooms requiring a high level of acoustic separation or simply providing acoustic or impact isolation from one area to another.
Floating floors systems are used for many purposes, predominantly to prevent noise passing through the floor but also to isolate against vibration and impact.
