Next door machinery vibration

[AnthonyL]

I've ended up moving next to a woodworking enthusiast. Although our properties (bungalows) are detached his garage is right next to (like within an inch or two) of my office/spare bedroom extension.

He has equipment such as circular saw, planer, lathe etc in the garage and the sound and vibration resonates through our house.

Of course if the properties had been built garage to garage the problem would have been minimised but all the garages are to the left of the properties.

Anyhow has anyone got experience on the efficacy or otherwise of vibration pads such as

or similar, or any other ideas?

[Nick Odell]

If he's running a business from there and working all hours of the day then there are rules about that sort of thing in domestic situations.

When I was running The Music Workshop from shop premises in a mixed retail/domestic terrace, I tacked carpet remnants onto the feet and backboards of my work benches etc. It was very effective at cutting out conducted vibration but there was still airborne noise to contend with.

Nick

[tabbypurr]

Noise reduction requires mass, isolation, stiffness, damping. Vibration is low frequency so especially needs mass. Rubber pads provide damping & a bit of mass.

Start by showing us the wall construction.

NT

[Bob Minchin]

Rubber pads/mounts will decouple the source from the foundations which you probably share and help with that transmission path but I'd expect the main route to be through the walls and open windows. The noise from a lathe should be quite low apart from intermittent cuts when starting off a square blank to make it round. A planer, assuming three knives, will predominate at around 200Hz and a saw will have blade tooth related noise in the 1-2kHz range. If it has a brush motor, there will be the banshee wail from that too although most serious woodworkers will have induction motor powered machinery and the noise generated will mainly be when actually cutting.

Low frequency vibration suggests that one or more machines has something out of balance which would be unusual and highly desirable to fix at source.

I think you can get simple frequency analysis apps for phones these days which might give you an idea of the frequency ranges you are dealing with and hence the type of solution. A/V mounts and pads are only likely to attenuate very low frequency vibrations.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , AnthonyL writes

I fit rectangles of reinforced rubber belt under all my machinery. Mainly to level up poorly laid agricultural concrete. I think most noise from woodworking machinery is likely to be airborne, particularly circular saw and planer.

I don't see much hope of him volunteering to fit sound absorbing material on his walls:-(

Perhaps you could encourage him to take up Golf?

[AnthonyL]

His garage would be single brick on my side and concrete floor (house construction mid-1960s)

My extension I guess is double brick or brick + breeze block and wooden floor c1985

My wall to his wall ~ 3" gap.

Definitely a sense of vibration/rumbling coming through our house.

[Brian Gaff]

Once the vibration is in the structure there is little one can do. Back when I worked a big Lathe was in an adjacent room and despite all sorts of things like suspended floor and decoupled walls, you still got the rumble all the time. Unfortunately if one could have put the lathe on some softer mounts it might have helped, but unfortunately this sort of gear needs a solid mounting for obvious reasons. When its structure borne its a nightmare. Have you noticed that a bloke with a hammer drill anywhere in a building is audible everywhere?

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Is the slab the garage is built on joined to the main concrete of the footings of your extension? If so severing this might help the structure borne components, and as saws tend to mainly be hf, then some good soundproofing might well cut that down. Brian

[Andy Burns]

Tricky with just 3" between the buildings ...

[Brian Gaff]

You do need to be careful as a bloke down the road seems to have taken up sawing up paving stones as a hobby, normally on a warm summers afternoon. Brian

[Clive Arthur]

Noise cancelling headphones. Inexpensive (~£30) ones work quite well for LF, expensive ones (~£300) work very well.

Cheers

[Robin]

Also legally tricky if the neighbour owns those 3 inches.

And then there's the Party Wall Act...

[Nightjar]

I found that rubber based anti-vibration products were fine for stand-alone items, like an air compressor, where it didn't matter if the top bit wiggled around a bit. They were less successful under machine tools that needed stability. I used this stuff under the lathes in my factories instead. It worked surprisingly well, considering that it appears to be a hard, rigid material:

[John Rumm]

One solution for those kinds of applications is to fix it to a solid base, but the isolate the base. So say a cast concrete pad for the lathe, but that itself on rubber mounts.

[Andrew]

You might have an air gap between external walls but I suspect your extension foundations are in physical contact with his garage foundations, since they will (or should be) double the width of the supporting wall and a similar depth

Hence vibrations are being conducted via his garage floor into his garage wall, down to his foundations, across to yours and up your extension walls.

Did your seller not disclose this ?

[Chris Green]

'Vibration is low frequency'??? It's any frequency you fancy! :-)

[Steve Walker]

Our next-door neighbour and his previous wife used to have poker parties on Thursday nights. In the summer this meant they were drunkenly shouting and laughing 'til 6:30 in the morning, next to open French doors, right near our open bedroom window ... and I was usually getting up at 7:45 for work!

One Friday, I'd booked the day off and planned to do some diy, but at

8:00 I started cutting up some steel with an angle grinder, right in the corner of the garden nearest their bedroom window. I kept it up for an hour or more.

The poker parties (or at least the noise from them) stopped after that.

SteveW

[The Natural Philosopher]

I used to rent half of a pair of back to back cottages on teh Fens. Isolated or what. At one time te other half waqs let to a couple of squaddies..just back from Iraq.

They decided to have a party nect to my bedroom. THis was in an extension buoilt out the cnback and had a commeon loft space. I could hear everyu word.

At 3 a.m. I was fed up, so, grabbing half a dozen airbombs from last years November 5th I slunk outside stark naked into the summer night, and planted all of them pointing directly over the house, lit them and scampered back to bed.

I guess being in a war makes you nervous of loud noises.

But nothing was ever said to ne directly and the "WTF? Are we under attack? " from the drunken squaddies was music to my ears.

The party stopped and the never bothered me with noise again.

[tabbypurr]

is low frequency so especially needs mass. Rubber pads provide damping & a bit of mass.

Then you've got most of the elements there already, mass, stiffness & decou pling. Damping would need to be very stiff damping for a brick wall, not fl imsy stuff intended for PB walls. I'd look at either lead lining or buildin g another wall leaf isolated from the existing one with sand/gravel damping . If you're sure the sound isn't getting in other ways. And if it's rumble it probably isn't.

NT

[tabbypurr]

If you can feel it as vibration it's definitely low frequency. Get yourself the relevant equipment & try it.

NT