Soundproofing front door

reford89

Hi all,
Would appreciate some help with a fairly unique issue. Our front door is on a main road. While our neighbours have simply bricked up the door so it is only there for show, the previous owners of our house decided to build a secondary door, so we basically have two front doors with a foot of gap in the middle. It's actually not terrible from a soundproofing perspective, but could definitely be better.

One option would be to just fill the gap with bricks, but it's actually handy to have the option to open to the doors if we want to (when we moved in we just slung everything through the door and into the lounge and would like to do the same when we move out). Do any of you have any more, potentially temporary solutions? Reading online it seems that weight is the key to good soundproofing.

Thanks
Sam

Mutton_Geoff

Is the noise coming through the doors or other places? Front window etc?

If it's just the door, check both doors are thoroughly draught proofed, perhaps even tape up the outside door joints with duct tape? If the inner lobby isn't that large, then how about filling it with Rockwool sound slabs? That way, they can easily be removed at a later date.

https://www.rockwool.co.uk/product-overview/trade-insulation-range/sound-insulation-slab-en-gb/

A cheaper way may be to fix in a basic stud wall with 4x2 timber, then fill the section with the slabs above, then cover the inside partition with sound shield plasterboard (blue stuff).

I live in a converted coach house and the upstairs bedrooms were noisy with road traffic through the poorly insulated roof. I stripped all the old plasterboard, put battens inbetween the joists to provide an air gap between the insulation and roofing felt, then put sound slab in as insulation then used the sound shield plasterboard (which is very heavy and dense). It works very well and the room is now much quieter (and resonance from voices/TV etc sound very "solid").

reford89

Just wanted to come back to a couple of old posts in case people were in similar situations. I did exactly as @Mutton_Geoff had suggested, but combined the Rock wool with the sound shield plasterboard (wow that is heavy!). So much better now - thanks for your help!