Soundproofing - what can we do?

[dave.lamacraft]

Hi,

We're experiencing noise problems from our neighbours, and are looking at soundproofing the party wall, so we're after any advice/tips/help.

We're in a 1920's 9'' brick semi-detached bungalow, concrete floors, roof-space mainly seperate (there is a small gap in apex in one part). The main source of the noise is the neighbours TV, and most of the noise that we get seems to come through the walls rather than floor or ceiling. The people in the house before us had dry-lined sections of the walls (interestingly, mainly where the noise is worst

- if only we'd spotted this when viewing!). The stuff they used is plasterboard backed with a couple of inches of blue foam. As far as I can tell this is attached to timber battens, which are in turn attached to the brick work (which I suspect is not rendered, at least in places), I don't think there is anything else in the cavity. I've got a feeling this may actually be amplifying the noise.

We have been looking at the products available from specialists, which seem very expensive (but then what cost do you put on peaceful sleep?!). From looking at posts here it seems there are plenty of people doing their own thing. Can anyone help?

Thanks a lot,

Dave.

[Andrew Mawson]

looking

advice/tips/help.

worst

least

I've

Well you could use this, but I'm biased!!!! :

[The Natural Philosopher]

If its internal insulation between neighbours the foam backed board is useless.

Simply take it all down, repoint any gaps and put another wall up using brick etc.

Airgaps are te worts thing of all, so make sure there are NONE.

After that low mass panels are crap..hence using more brick. A double brick wall is really very very good.

[bomb#20]

I have the same situation, noise through a party wall. I built a second wall with Wickes dense rockwool sound-proofing slabs and plasterboard. Totally useless. Complete waste of money. I am now going to remove it all and build the second wall using dense concrete blocks. .

[Owain]

Quite a lot of tellies seem to shove as much sound out of the back as they do from the front, and people turn the volume up trying to compensate for poor intelligibility. If your neighbours could try moving the telly, or using better quality speakers, that might help a lot.

Well-stocked bookshelves are supposed to be pretty good at deadening sound.

Owain

[John Rumm]

That might be part of the problem - it works better if the second wall is decoupled from the first i.e. attached to floor and ceiling, but not touching the existing wall.

[meow2222]

That works well for lightweight walls.

The other thing is pavlovian training. You need one block of wood & one SDS drill. Every time the noise gets excessive, a 1 sec blast on the sds against wall/floor/etc. Only really if hostilities have been declared though!

NT

[Robert Laws]

concrete floors,

with Wickes dense

Did you make sure that the extra wall was acoustically decoupled from the existing wall? This is important. The studs for the new wall must not be attatched to the existing wall.

A good book on this is "noise control in residential buildings" by harris ISBN 0-07-026942-4 he give the dB attenuation for all sorts of specific constructions.

R

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A stud wall with a double layer of thick plasterboard makes a very cost effective sound barrier. Fixing the studs to the original wall reduces the effectiveness considerably, though. And the larger the gap, the better.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Heh heh. But noise masking can help. Simply drown out their noise with that you don't mind hearing or can ignore. Doesn't have to be music - could be a recording of wind, traffic, birdsong etc. If you like total peace and quiet - move. But you'll find it difficult to get a totally silent place anywhere - nature makes plenty of noises of its own.

[bomb#20]

I didn't use any studwork as the wall is an alcove between a chimney breast and external wall. I glued the rockwool slabs to the party wall and then glued plasterboard to the slabs. I filled the edges with mastic. I think The Natural Philosopher is right, you have to have a wall that is dense and heavy. .

[dave.lamacraft]

Thanks a lot for all the posts.

We're looking at a 'physical' solution as they don't seem to want to do anything about it, so far. Maybe the SDS drill will change things.....

Looks like the long term solution is ripping the paneling off, filling any gaps in brick work, maybe rendering the brick work, and building a

2-layer plasterboard stud wall, isolated from the problem walls.

Thanks again,

Dave

[FKruger]

external wall.

and heavy.

I think what you tried is correct in principle, so long as the plasterboard wasnt resting on the floor, but you would have to do the whole wall. If some of the wall was not insulated for sound, its difficult to judge the success. Also a lot of noise comes through the floor and ceiling especialy if the joists go straight into the partition wall.

[Robert Laws]

As an example: two 'interleaved' but not touching stud walls each with 2"x4" studs at 16" centres doublethickness of 5/8" plasterboard on each nailed at 6-8" with 3.5" of fibreglass fill:

35dB attenuation at 125 Hz, rising to 55dB at 1000Hz

For comparison, a pair of foam earlugs, well shoved in, will give you up to about 20dB attenuation.

Robert

[Owain]

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to burn the f*ck*rs out until some civilised neighbours move in?

Owain