Hi,
my wife and I are thinking of buying a 1970s semi-detached house. We are a bit concerned about noise from the neighbouring house; as far as I can tell they're not noisy neighbours, but we did find that standing in the front room, we could hear them talking next door.
I'm wondering to what extent it's really possible to soundproof a semi- detached house. I don't want to eliminate all noise completely, but I'd rather not be able to hear the TV or conversations from next door. I'm not so worried about occasional noises like slamming doors.
We're willing to spend quite a lot of money, if necessary, but would prefer not to lose too much space (although we recognise we'll probably have to lose a few inches of space in the rooms that are being soundproofed - about 20ft of wall on each of two floors, I guess).
I've read lots of discussion from the archives of this newsgroup and have looked at some sites that offer soundproofing services, but I've not been able to draw any real conclusions about what's really possible. Will solutions that involve putting up an additional wall of about 60mm thickness (which seems to be the standard thing offered by the sites I've looked at) really make a big difference? I found one really useful posting that said that a loud TV might be 90db, a normal party wall might cut out 45db and sound below 20db is inaudible, meaning you'd need to cut an additional 25db. Does that sound right? Is cutting 25db feasible?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any advice. Also, if anyone has had experience of soundproofing a semi, I'd love to hear how you got on, and how successful you'd say it was.
Ben