Soundproofing your house - done this or know of anyone who has?

JustAnotherSaver

Coming from the angle of to stop hearing your neighbours (as much as can be possible)?

Our neighbours are inconsiderate [insertchoseninsulthere]. Karaoke at 3am as Saturday passes in to Sunday. There's a fair list as to why they're just inconsiderate clowns but the noise is pretty frustrating.

Weirdly, for the most part they're actually ok. You can't even say it's every weekend, but when it happens, Jesus Christ does it happen. It makes me wonder if some times they actually just sit in the living room not talking as it's pretty silent and then other days you can hear them just talking clear as day, and that's before they get on to the singing and her making farm animal noises.

House is a 1930s semi. Living rooms and bedrooms connect, annoyingly. Flooring is suspended timber floor with a fair old 1mtr drop.

I just wondered if anyone here had soundproofed their house and what they had done or whether anyone reading this knows of anyone who has, what they did and also the results and cost of it?

I don't imagine it's actually something we'll end up doing as i suspect it's going to be very very costly so i'm asking more from a curiosity standing.

I'm guessing it'd be better for the suspended timber floor to be turned in to a solid floor (which could bring its own issues)? We had a quote for that when we were looking at getting damp proofing done - £12k for starters. Cash we don't have.

I'm not sure what you'd do with the party wall but i'm guessing the upstairs floor between living room and bedroom would have to get rammed with some kind of special acoustic insulation?

Bedroom wall probably would have to get treated same way the living room party wall does. Then there's the question of whether roadside walls need treating also as they don't connect.

Then the loft and whether this would be treated, or not, and with what.

Bit unusual so i wouldn't be surprised if nobody has gone to the lengths and have instead just moved. I wouldn't bother suggesting talking to them either - been there and tried that.

tacpot12

I've not done it, but I do know quite a bit about what is involved.

You need mass (weight) to dampen the noise (which is basically vibration). You might need different sorts materials to stop the range of frequencies that the neighbours are producing. You will need to place sound-deadening material in all the walls between yourself and next door.  This might include the party wall in the loft, as sound will enter the loft and if it causes the plaster ceiling to resonate, you will hear it in the bedrooms. Often two layers of a special plasterboard (e.g. Gyproc SoundBloc or possibly Habito) are used on resilient battens fixed to timber battens, with the space inside filled with rockwool. 

You can see some of the construction that is needed here: https://www.novaacoustics.co.uk/sound-insulation-design-advice/soundproofing-walls/NOVA-CB-TB-RB-01

You might even consider using this company or a similar local contractor to do the work. 

This is something that could be done on a DIY basis, with the added advantage that you can do one room first to see whether it works well enough to justify getting the other rooms done. Another advantage of doing the work is that you get to drill the party wall repeatedly with a hammer drill to install the fixings! If the neighbours complain, just say sorry, but the walls are really thin so you need to do the work to stop noise coming through. Blame the wall, not the neighbours, to defuse the situation! 

Replacing the floors with solid will certainly help but be expensive and it's not a DIY job unless you are very keen. If the new solid floor can be isolated from the rest of the building, no noise can be transmitted by the floor. One option for a solid floor would be Lewis Deck + a screed. An advantage of this is that you can fit underfloor heating pipes at the same time and prepare your house to have a heat pump rather than a boiler for heating. You don't need to connect the pipes to your heating system, just fill them and cap them off. 

Petriix

Basically it's a massive and expensive job, you'll lose lots of space and the results won't be as good as you hope. You could spend thousands and still get disturbed; and it would be even more annoying then.

I suggest that you attempt communication rather than building work. Keep it amicable, just ask for some advanced notice of when they're planning a karaoke night and go somewhere else for the night. Not ideal during lockdown but a lot cheaper in the long run.

JustAnotherSaver

Interesting.

I've seen tickets at my place for resilient bars but it's not common. I'm familiar with the soundblock plasterboard. 15mm isn't so common. Very rare do we get an order for that - it's almost always 12.5mm. Aside from the colouring, the only difference I can see between this and the other plasterboards (standard, moisture & fire 12.5mm) is weight - and even then it's only a slight difference. Maybe there's more to it such as the material underneath the paper is different, i don't know.

Not familiar with "Lewis Deck". Is that another term for block and beam or is it something completely different? We considered block & beam as we have a damp issue but in the end for cost we went with replacing the old flooring with like-for-like. Just this time the ends were wrapped in DPC but that has nothing to do with sound proofing obviously. We do have a pump under floor but it's a sump pump, again as we have a fair old damp issue and the sub floor on a 1mtr drop - without a pump the water level will come up to maybe 0.5, 0.6mtrs over a 7mtr-x-4mtr span. In other words, a fair old amount of water.

Petriix said:

Basically it's a massive and expensive job, you'll lose lots of space and the results won't be as good as you hope. You could spend thousands and still get disturbed; and it would be even more annoying then.

Exactly our concern and what i suspect would actually happen.

I've come from a detached house which i lived in all my life and my wife came from an end of terrace where it was the stairs that connected. We've not really grown up on noise. I certainly haven't.

On the one hand, there's worse out there. Before they moved out, the house across the street would be having slanging matches in the street with their neighbour because they had unruly kids and we could hear their noise from our house, never mind being connected to them, so we're well aware that it could be worse.

But it's bad enough. There's the random nights of noise, there's the face that it'll get to about 12am and you'll hear doors being slammed and drawers constantly being opened and shut.

We resort to ear plugs, which for the most part sort the problem. I think only once have they been so loud that i've heard their noise through the ear plugs. They hurt my ears long term though and actually they compacted ear wax on me which meant i had to go to ENT in the end to get it sucked out. The ENT guy gave me a telling for wearing ear plugs. That's fine and all for him - he probably can afford to live in a nice detached house.

fenwick458

best way to block out the sound of karaoke at 3AM is just move house. there is no soundproofing in the world that will stop that. you could spend 10 grand and only quieten it down a bit
so my advice is get some decent earplugs or move house

RelievedSheff

Probably not what you want to hear but we were in a similar situation in a 1930's semi where the main living room and main bedroom were on the party wall. In the end we just moved house to get away from the completely idiotic inconsiderate neighbours.

When we moved we discounted any attached property, we were not willing to run the risk of having noisy neighbours again.

JustAnotherSaver

I can't remember if I've asked this before or looked in to it before or what and even if I have I can't remember what the feedback was. 

The chances of us getting detached are slim to none. Even when my mother passes which hopefully won't be for a long time, there's my brother and sister in the mix who may also want the house. 

So it's almost certain that we remain looking at semi's. 
Which brings the question of what is your experience of noise when it's only the stairway and bathrooms that connect and the living room and bedrooms are on the opposite sides of the house? Can you still hear noise? 

I imagine if it's a house party with thumping bass then probably but would you generally hear a loud TV? Loud talking and doors being opened and closed constantly?
Or not? 

Since we moved in, my wife's anxiety has shot through the roof. She's developed psoriasis which we can't prove is down to this and it possibly isn't solely down to this but the stress of it may be a contributory factor as she says every single day she drives down the road to come home she's dreading seeing their car on the drive to show they're in. 

We can't do anything about outside noise but we don't want to move from noisy neighbours to another house just as noisy. If stairways meeting can mostly solve the problem then could be something to look at. 

jimi_man

Hi

In general soundproofing is related to the amount of money you are prepared to put into it. Whilst it's relatively easy to block high frequency noise, low frequency (bass) sounds are much more difficult and require mass which will expensive and reduce your room size. It's maybe contrary to popular thinking, but older houses - due to construction methods - are generally not as good at blocking sound as newer ones.

Personally I think the most cost effective solution would be to engage in some mediation between you and your neighbours to prevent excess noise. 

RelievedSheff

JustAnotherSaver said:

I can't remember if I've asked this before or looked in to it before or what and even if I have I can't remember what the feedback was. 

The chances of us getting detached are slim to none. Even when my mother passes which hopefully won't be for a long time, there's my brother and sister in the mix who may also want the house. 

So it's almost certain that we remain looking at semi's. 
Which brings the question of what is your experience of noise when it's only the stairway and bathrooms that connect and the living room and bedrooms are on the opposite sides of the house? Can you still hear noise? 

I imagine if it's a house party with thumping bass then probably but would you generally hear a loud TV? Loud talking and doors being opened and closed constantly?
Or not? 

Since we moved in, my wife's anxiety has shot through the roof. She's developed psoriasis which we can't prove is down to this and it possibly isn't solely down to this but the stress of it may be a contributory factor as she says every single day she drives down the road to come home she's dreading seeing their car on the drive to show they're in. 

We can't do anything about outside noise but we don't want to move from noisy neighbours to another house just as noisy. If stairways meeting can mostly solve the problem then could be something to look at. 

The house previous to the 1930's semi was a large Victorian semi detached villa with the stairs up the middle and living rooms on the external walls. We very rarely heard any noise from the neighbours in that house other than in the attic rooms which did adjoin the party wall. So yes room layout is important as is the build quality of the property. The 30's semi we were in was very poorly built.

Tippytoes

We had a similar problem and, for the sake of our sanity, ended up having to move house.  Very sorry for your situation.  I hope you get the peace and quiet you deserve.

knightstyle

We are currently moving from our 2006 built town house as we cannot stand the noise etc. any longer.  Even if you sound proof the house you will still get noise from their windows when you open yours so will need ventilation as well as the sound proofing.