Lead under Salon carpet

I recently pulled up a corner of the salon carpet on my 1986, 48MY and found the sub-flooring/sole covered with a sheet of lead about 1/16" thick. It is stapled in place. My only guess is that it is for sound absorption. Anyone else found this and any other ideas.

sound dampening. Lead is very good at not transmitting sound.

Was this standard on all Californians?

I dont know but probably not as it is expensive. Builders often use foam and foil. Not anywhere as good.

Removed mine

I think I read in the "sticky" article that the lead floor was for sound and was an option. Mine was deteriorating especially at the entrances. I think water was getting in and holding under the lead. I removed mine and lightened the boat up about 100 pounds.

Lead sheet lying there on the subfloor would be of some use for sound but better if mounted on foam like those sound-deadening sheets.

Simple rules for soundproofing: heavy, floppy, asymmetrical in cross section (EX: two layers of drywall on one side of a wall, and disconnected (floppy) from one layer on the other), airtight - gasketed doors, wall and floor edges.

That's why your floor hatches are so darned heavy and have the tapered and labyrinth (stepped) edges.

I've got lead lined rubber under my saloon carpet. Makes a big difference and yes it is heavy

Lead was the noise barrier of choice, but has since been replaced in most applications with mass loaded vinyl. As DHeckrotte mentioned performance would be enhanced with a foam decoupler layer which typically also provides a plush feel underfoot.
Current acoustic carpet underlayments use a mass loaded vinyl as the barrier bonded to a foam decoupler. I have this in my Mainship and it works very well.

http://www.soundown.com/Section 2 PDFs/2.1 PDFs/Carpet Underlay.pdf

Lucky the EPA hasn't fined you for not removing that source of lead poisoning!

Lead is effective. Years ago during a new office fit out, in desperation, we lead lined the walls of the office used by one of my business partners. The whole office became much quieter than the old one.

markpierce said:

Lucky the EPA hasn't fined you for not removing that source of lead poisoning!

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I wouldn't worry about this....not a real issue.

Keysdisease said:

I have this in my Mainship and it works very well.

http://www.soundown.com/Section 2 PDFs/2.1 PDFs/Carpet Underlay.pdf

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This is what what I want in my sedan. I have carpet with an old worn out pad so the carpet underlayment would work perfectly on FW.

Every time I think I might be able to afford it, something new crops up and snatches those boat bucks right out of my hand. Someday...

we also found lead under the carpet. some of it had bubbled up and cracked. We decided to cover it with Eco-bond. Found it on the EPA website. My wife was worried about grandkids playing on the salon floor.

It is not for sound damping, the lead you found is to protect from radiation coming from the nuclear reactor in your ER. Don't you know you had a nuclear trawler?

We had the loaded vinyl with a foam decoupling layer. Very effective and no lead poisoning.

We found the same in our 1988 45' Californian. We used to own a car stereo shop and our tech used a product that was flexible to cover the floor to kill road noise and stop "oilcanning" of the car's metal when he installed heart stopping bass speakers. It was effective in autos.

We put the 2 pound per square foot loaded vinyl carpet underlayment in a previous boat. Got it from Sundown. The first problem with it was that the roll came and weighed 400 pounds. The other problem was that I blew out my knee trying to get it loaded into the truck. It came to a commercial receiving facility since I could not have been able to get the roll out of the truck. They wanted to fork it into my truck but I wouldn’t have been able to get it out. So I took the measurements to the facility and had them lay it on the ground in the parking lot. I cut it into rough sized pieces and then loaded the pieces into my truck. And blew out my knee and had to have surgery, but not really the underlayment’s fault.

I used to work in the lead industry. Mining, processing smelting, refining and sales. Lead metal has virtually nil toxicity. Lead oxide is a different story and is very closely monitored and controlled in operations producing oxides.

Lead sound absorbing products are very effective but expensive. I've first hand experience with a high end yacht that used lead sound proofing materials placed upon Aluminum integral fuel tanks. The tank tops rotted out. The fix was not cheap.

sunchaser said:

I used to work in the lead industry. Mining, processing smelting, refining and sales. Lead metal has virtually nil toxicity. Lead oxide is a different story and is very closely monitored and controlled in operations producing oxides.

Lead sound absorbing products are very effective but expensive. I've first hand experience with a high end yacht that used lead sound proofing materials placed upon Aluminum integral fuel tanks. The tank tops rotted out. The fix was not cheap.

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That is why they pretty much have gone to mineral loaded vinyl for sound dampening now. It isn’t hazardous. Regular lead may or may not be hazardous, I am not knowledgeable enough to say for sure, but I don’t want it on my boat. We live about 1 hour from Flint and the water problems with lead pipes.

Lou_tribal said:

It is not for sound damping, the lead you found is to protect from radiation coming from the nuclear reactor in your ER. Don't you know you had a nuclear trawler?

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What? It is there to keep Clark Kent from seeing your engine.