Please help ... need soundproofing advice / experience

spendy

Hi everyone ... I am hoping someone can help me on here regarding soundproofing.

I live in a ground floor flat, and my bedroom is directly below the living room upstairs. They are pretty noisy and after years and years of going upstairs and begging them to keep it down, it looks like I have no choice but to sort out some soundproofing in an attempt not to lose my mind completely. It's so bad that it's affecting my health and is triggering anxiety attacks.

Anyway, I would love to ask for a cheap method of soundproofing, but I'm sure one doesn't exist. So, I'll just ask for a method that works. The noise that's most bothersome is loud talking, music and tv (though they are constantly dragging their furniture and have very heavy footfall). Also I have a fitted wardrobe, will this affect my being able to have soundproofing done? Has anyone else had effective soundproofing installed?

Would love to hear your advice, thanks.

budgetdiyer

I have a similar problem. Do you know anything about the current construction of your ceiling and the joists / structure above?

For example mine is a 50's purpose built flat, wooden floorboards above, no insulation between the joists and a single layer of plasterboard (and and idiots above who have never heard of underlay or a decent quality carpet!)

We bit the bullet after three years and this year we redid the ceiling in our second bedroom (the smallest one so we could test the impact the insulation might make) - Can you believe they had the cheek to complain about the noise we made doing it (which was'nt actually that bad at all! :mad:)

This is a quick overview of what we did:

- Remove exisiting ceiling
- Insulated between joists with 100mm rockwool flexi & stuffed any and all gaps between wall voids, for example i could reach arm length into the void above our bathroom ceiling)
- Fitted resilient bars at right angles to our existing joists
- Fitted two layers (over lapping the joints) of 12.5mm acoustic plasterboard
- Sealed all joints around edges and between layers of plasterboard with acoustic sealant.
- taped and filled plasterboard joints and then repainted

Overall results
Voices are significantly reduced - Washing machine (their kitchen is above) is significantly deadened - Impact noise (footfall) is slightly muffled.

It cost me less than £300 in materials to do a ceiling measuring 3m x 1.8m, and excluding decorating it, it took two of us around 8 hours to do. If i do anymore i will invest in a plasterboard lift as the acoustic boards are heavy!

The results / mess and upheaval weren't enough for me to persuade my wife to let me do our main bedroom (their lounge above...)

anotherbaldrick

You really need to install a secondary acoustic ceiling , isolated from the original structure. However this will take up space at high level, do you have enough to loose 8" or so on headroom within your property ?

southcoastrgi

a pair of headphones ?

RandomDan

Thinking outside of the box, would it be possible / desirable to change your rooms so your bedroom is not under their living room? Swap around your bedroom and lounge.

Norman_Castle

The best solution is courteous neighbors and thick underlay. Is their bedroom above part of your flat?. Do you own a stereo?