Sound proof plasterboards

[Simon Lewis]

Loads of egg trays glued to the walls and ceiling have an amazing effect. Unfortunately it's not very pretty.

 

...Or useful acoustically.... ;-)

 

In fact they are quite detrimental and should be avoided completely!

 

See here...

[Paul TC]

I think this may just have been a west of scotland thing, but in many old Glasgow buildings - especially between tenement flats and in some victorian houses - it was common to fill the void between ceilings and the floorboards of the room above with 2 or 3 inches of ash or boiler clinker. Known as “deadening”, it was for sound and thermal insulation.

 

 

The upmarket version was to pack between the joists with sawdust. Grade 1 listed building, large Victorian Country Mansion in West Country used by a Fire Brigade as a HQ many years ago. Removed as a fire hazard when found in what was to be the new Brigade Control Room / Comms Centre.

[cedd]

Wow, thank you to everyone for a wealth of replies.

 

The overriding response seems to be "it isn't as easy as that".

Part of my difficulty is, I don't actually know what the problem is yet, or even if there is one! As I mentioned, we don't currently have a noise problem, I'm just wanting to use the replastering and decorating we're doing as a chance to nip any future issues in the bud. I'm not going to have the depth to do a fully floating partition sadly - I can cope with losing a couple of plasterboards thickness in each room, but framing out a second partition isn't going to work sadly. That's why the claims of the boards in my links were so attractive - lots of attenuation for very little loss of space. Sadly as is often the case, such an attractive solution appears to be a bit of pie in the sky.

I'll have a read at some of the linked literature and have a ponder.

 

Thanks once again

[Simon Lewis]

I wonder what effect the acoustic foam panels designed to reduce reflection in a room would have on external sound coming in.

 

Clive - In sufficient quantity, absorption inside the room is likely to reduce the level of the reverberant sound field, so things may sound a little quieter. However, it's unlikely to make too much of a difference on the level of sound coming in from outside, unless it was part of a system to actually isolate sound.

Just putting a few foam wedges on the wall won't help that much.

[Jivemaster]

IMO the simple answer to Cedd's question is that there isn't a low cost low space total solution to noise pollution. Sound generated elsewhere in the structure will be transmitted to and through the structure. So you'd have to isolate all the floors walls and ceilings from the structure to make serious isolation. Floating a new floor on flexi mounts would reduce the height of the room, floating a new ceiling would take more headroom, adding walls inside the structure would turn an ordinary room into a small cupboard.

 

Maybe add a layer of absorbent board to the party wall for a little isolation and expect little noise reduction, but beyond that any project will be expensive and eat into precious space and still be limited in effect.

[GR1]

As written above plasterboard is just a waste of time and money if you expect any real improvement. Much better would be to save your money towards a detached property which is the only realistic domestic solution for most situations.