I'm looking cost effective method to reduce sounds that come up through the floor in my ranch house. Can I use regular thermal insulation? How do I hang without plastic? I don't want a vapor barrier?

Thanks

Hi

It would depend on how loud the sounds coming through are (no point over-killing sound) and what type of floor/basement ceiling you have.

A few ways. Using insulation will help to a point. Purchase unfaced insulation without vapor barrier if you want. If both sides are heated and cooled. Having a vapor barrier will make no diffrence.

Howver if you need good sound prevention. Simply putting up insulation in the beams will not work that well. You need to isolate the sheetrock ceiling if you have one from the ceiling joists above. Do this by purchasing Z shaped metal joists made just for this job.
The thin metal will prevent a lot of vibration from traveling throgh the joists.
Or you could install a suspened ceiling with wires. Place the insulation on top of the panels. You will see a very good improvement.
All depends how much sound your looking to stop.

I'm not looking to completely eliminate noise. I'm just trying to deaden some of the intermittent noises that come from the water softener and iron filter, etc. My 2700 SQFT ranch has an unfinished concrete block basement supporting a wooden floor. The infrequency of the noises doesn't justify spending a whole lot of money. I found a product called Quiet Batt, but it's expensive. $92 for one 16X32' roll.

What I gather from your response is that regular insulation would help a little, but for the time and money may not be worth it.

Insulation will help on the water noises, but those water softeners can be noisy and any banging and clanging will transmit through the rest of the plumbing, no matter what. In my last house the worst noise was from the whooshing as the softener filled and flushed each night, and I never found a good way to deaden it. You can, however, adjust the timing of the cycle to run during the day instead of at night if that would help.

I have no idea what size the thing is thats making the noise. (In Scotland we have soft water naturally)

Might be easier and cheaper to build a box around the equpipment and soundproof the inside of the box with rockwool (or similar soft and fire-proof material - even the cleaner and nicer to handle Armacell). However, check with the manufacturer of the equpiment because this will thermally insulate it too. That could be a problem.