[Greenbuilding] tongue'n'groovie

[Alan Abrams]

> 5.  Have a second floor?  Skip the sheetrock on the first floor 
> ceiling.
> Use joists on 48" centers with toungue and groove 1-1/2" flooring.  
> It's
> the ceiling below, the floor above.  It costs more than plywood to put
> in, but the whole system is way cheaper than sheetrock, subfloor,
> carpet, and so forth...........


I had that same tongue-and-groovie idea a few years back--but with the nice
beveled and beaded side of the material face down--the upper side was
extremely rough--and would have required copious applications of filler to
prevent loss if the change were to fall out of your pocket.  There was also
quite a bit of give from board to board, even though the select structural
doug fir was well within its span limits.

and as predicted here, it was too noisy, failing to mute sound downwards and
upwards--in this case, for the bedroom of a firefighter who worked a radical
schedule, and often had to sleep at a time when the kids came home from
school.

We ended up installing 1/2" woodstalk (ah, those were the days, when the
woodstalk flowed like wine...) as an underlayment, and carpeting as the
finish.

No comments were registered by the spotted owls displaced by the use of this
material, though... 

-Alan Abrams