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Our walls seem to be made of paper. We can hear our neighbour sneeze, chat on the phone, sing (opera), laugh....
And she can probably hear our rampant scrabble sessions and yelling at the kids.
What can we do about soundproofing the wall that doesn't look like egg boxes?
plasterboard ?
Not at all easy. I believe you will basically need a false wall with sound insulation behind it taking a fair chunk out of your room. Maybe underfloor as well as often a lot of sound travels underfloor.
difficult and expensive
You can speak to our Tech Dept for some free (and good) advice. www.soundteductionsystems.co.uk
01204 380074.
Unfortunately the only thing that significantly reduces sound transmission is mass - i.e. heavier walls.
I looked into this a while back and came to the conclusion that the best way would be to strip off the dot and dab plasterboard and to render and plaster the walls, maybe incorporating a sound deadening layer of Butyl ( I think). Anyway funds dont allow at the moment but maybe in the future.
I have had pretty good success previously 3 x 2 stud frame wall about 40mm in from existing wall , screw nothing to old wall at all leaving a void with nothing bridging old and new, fill the gaps in the studding completely with 50mm polystyrene then mount soundblock plasterboard onto the timber, probably loose 125 mm max, not ideal but sound will be considerably reduced.
Just had our bathroom done (fiberglass wool, plasterboard and plaster), as far as sound insulation goes it may as well not be there.
Conversely I was working on a site where they spec'd OSB and 2x plasterboard on each side. Get that (and see if your neighbours will do their side).
Modern houses do seem to have this issue.
If there's hollow space behind the wall/prefab plaster boards you could look at filing it with some sort of expanding foam injection? Or fill it with sand for maximum damping.
Aren't there sound proofing regulations for new builds?
The devil is in the detail with this kind of thing. For example, note how removing a layer or two of plasterboard can actually increase isolation.
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You also have to consider that the sound may travel through floors, ceilings and other parts of the structure as well...
It’s all about discontinued construction, as with walls above ie voids, it’s great doing the walls but sound will travel through floors/ceilings, anything, basically you make a box within a box, expensive
We’ve done the ground and first floor of our place to try and isolate the neighbours who do drum practice for up to 8 hours non stop.
The party wall is double brick and before the insulation we could hear most of their noise. We installed battens at 40cm centres, then 25mm isover wool and 2 x 12.5mm layers of overlapped gyproc soundbloc before plastering.
It’s made a massive difference to the level of noise but the trick is to cut all of the floorboards back so the soundbloc goes behind the flooring.
Cost wise we paid £3k for 39m2 of wall to be done including all materials and labour.
I have a friend who designs audio studios and that's what he has to do. The room is within an an outer shell, has high mass and the whole thing sits on damped springs. It's very impressivebasically you make a box within a box, expensive
Sounds like you need to do what cheddarchallenged
We had this with two houses in a row, we moved house in short order as nothing will really work. The fundamental design of these modern homes just enables sound to propagate through party walls.
It’s shocking how poor they are, we could hear light switches, cutlery on plates, toilets flushing etc. Also it can be very stressful for you
I found [url= https://www.soundstop.co.uk/soundproofing_walls.php ]this website[/url] useful for comparing options of cost v performance v space lost. the cost calculator is very useful. Also did some online comparison of the cost of their individual materials and they seemed reasonable (acoustic plasterboard, furring strip, acoustic wool etc).
100mm Rockwool, double skin 15mm soundbloc staggered.
What's wrong with just putting bookcases,wardrobes,paintings tapestries etc up against a wall?Perhaps with old rugs/continental quilts stuffed behind them.The Turks even stick rugs on the wall.
What's wrong with just putting bookcases,wardrobes,paintings tapestries etc up against a wall?
Much of that could just quieten/deaden the OP’s room and, I suspect, make some of the sounds coming from next door more audible. Only decoupling and additional mass will reduce the volume of transmitted sound. There are a lot of somewhat unintuitive factors to consider in treating sound in a space.
What are these unintuitive factors you speak of Tf?
