Neighbour is not noisy but you can hear everything !

He says he can’t hear me, so I’m wondering if the fire/chimney breast which has been removed up to loft level by a previous owner has anything to do with it? His is still there and it’s a fairly huge thing in a relatively small room.

I’m probably going to re-instate mine on a smaller scale to accommodate a woodburner and wondered if there is anything I could fit at the same time to insulate the adjoining wall which won’t reduce the space too much ie. plasterboard thick.

Walls are brick and skimmed, house built around 1890. Cheers

Batten the whole wall with 3x2s, insulating wool in between battens, plasterboard on top. You’ll lose 3.5 inches on your room width, but have nice peace and quiet.

A small price to pay.

Oh, and He says he can’t hear you is drivel on his part.

oops!

Disagree. Rockwool hasn’t got the density to deaden the sound, and the battens will transmit the sound straight through to the new plasterboard.

Heavy rubber underlay or a proper sound proofing material would be much better, you may find you can get a product that has an acceptable finish and doesn’t need to be covered.

Do some research as you don’t want to waste time and money doing the wrong thing…

acoustic plasterboard (with a heavy rubber core) might be worth the splash. You only want to be doing it once.

Also acoustic insulation available.

http://www.soundstopsolutions.co.uk/materials.php

3×2 and insulation wool won’t work. You need to use dedicated materials and you have to effectively isolate the acoustic barrier from the party wall. I researched this extensively and in the end bought a detatched house.

You can reduce it a considerable bit with some insulation, but whatever you do, make sure that the structure is remote from the wall otherwise pointless as the structure will transmit the sound, and possibly amplify it if you have any voids.

I believe Mr Sparkle is your man for this. He does it for a living.

we’ve just sorted this problem – our neighbour is a musician and mostly does drum practice for 2 to 3 hour stints at all times of the day and night and the changes we made have almost entirely stopped noise through the party wall.

We used 2 layers of overlapping Gyproc soundbloc on 1″ battens – soundbloc is a heavier denser form of plasterboard.

We got it plastered so we could paint it but potentially depending on your room you could just wallpaper / line the soundbloc and paint over that.

Cost wise it’s pretty reasonable and potentially something you can you do yourself if you are DIY capable – two things to watch out for though:

1. The need to move any wall lights / plugs / radiators and re-install on the new wall. This may require existing wiring to be extended.

2. The run of your floorboards – depending on where your pipework runs and the direction of joists you may have an issue raising the outer floorboards in the future if the need arises.

It’s also worth shoving rockwool up against the party wall at floor / ceiling level in the voids between joists.

Our noise issues with next door ended 3 weeks ago when our enormously large breasted neighbour left her husband and moved out. It’s been quiet ever since. I must admit, it’s a bit of a loss not being able to watch her running to the car when she’s late but that’s a hit I’m prepared to accept.

Thanks for the replies.

I’ll have a look at some acoustic plasterboard options but it looks like it will be a compromise between ‘proper’ soundproofing and not losing too much space although THIS SYSTEM might be an option at 45mm thick.

A lot will depend on the construction of the floors and ceiling. Adding soundbloc board to the walls and insulating is all well and good but you may need to look at these other areas as well.

The Beard

I think that is part of the problem too, as although floor is concrete, there is an ‘open’ wooden staircase in the lounge to upstairs and wooden flooring, creating an chamber which seems to resonate sound all around the house!

Concrete can be a brilliant conductor of sound if suspended and allowed to vibrate – especially impact from footfall or a deep bass type. The density of a soundbloc board should help to deaden any resonating sound in the space but we very often have to supplement it with other acoustic measures to achieve the required drop in sound transmission. Exposed timber is good at reflecting sound so you might want to think about carpet with an acoustic underlay (unfortunately!) It’s always good practice to isolate and absorb sound – so an air gap and some dense form of insulation between you and your neighbour is what you’re after.

Arse! Thanks to Samuri I no have tea all over my desk / screen keyboard!

We used this stuff – Acousticel with 2 layers of acoustic plasterboard on top – which is quite good at stopping transmission of speech etc but you can’t use it behind a fireplace so when our neighbours riddle their stove it still sounds as though it’s in our front room. Detached house is the only real answer.

Floor muffle/heavy duty carpet underlay against the wall, 3×2 studing, with rockwool flexi inbetween the studs, 1 or 2 sheets of accoustic plasterboard depending on how much roomspace you’re willing to loose.

Acoustic plasterboard on its own makes no difference at all.

Thanks all. It’s something I need to give a bit of thought to, as I’m not happy with the electrics and some of the central heating piping is untidy, so it may well be worth the trade-off to lose a few inches and get it all sorted at the same time.

Carpet would also make a big difference and SWMBO is talking about a spiral staircase!

As suggested ^^ it would probably have been cheaper to buy a detached house 🙂