Soundproofing in terraced house

[Coconutfeet]

We are getting ready to redecorate the front room (a knocked through lounge) of our terraced house and we're thinking that now might be the time to put in some kind of sound proofing as the walls are really thin and the neighbours are quite loud.

I've been looking at products like this and this, but I've got no idea what's good. Neither of the builders/decorators I've had in so far have any experience of sound proofing.

Has anyone done it successfully and if so, what did you use?

Bump

Depends what level insulation you want but that looks plausible, especially if fixed to battens on the wall with further insulation behind.
The technical helpline people for the white book will be normally very happy to recommend your best solution if you give them a call..technical is 0844 800 1991

Thanks very much utopian. I will follow that up.

coconutfeet are you in a new build or an older property?

Hi MinimalistMommi - it's a Victorian terrace.

We're in one of those too

I've found this excellent and very easy to install.

Or if you have space to batten, maybe use resilience bars to mechanically decouple the plasterboard from the party wall?

You will be tempted to treat those parts of the wall tht are exposed and easy to get at (the decorated surfaces).

But start with those parts of the wall that are not covered in plaster. Internal brickwork is always poor quality, because it doesn't show, and small Victorian houses were cheaply built.

The parts you can't see are behind the skirting, under the floors, and above the ceiling in the loft. There wil be cracks and gaps between the bricks. Preferably fill these with sand and cement. Pack dense mineral wool batts (from the builders merchant) between the adjoining walls and your floor joists. If the joists go into the party wall, inject expanding foam into the gap that will exist, and pack the wool into the space between the joists for a foot or so.

A lot of noise comes through fireplaces where the party wall is often only half a brick thick between the flues, and may by now also be cracked and gappy.

Thanks all. I don't think there's really enough room to batten but I will investigate the thin wall system, Parsing.

Good point about the bits we can't see Pigletjohn. I'm a bit concerned about the fireplace because even if we do all the rest, the fireplace is open and as we've already got a stove in there we can't really do much about it.

To be fair, the neighbours aren't really noisy. But we make noise at different times of the day as we tend to be up early (small children) and they're up late and there are lots of them so it would be good to deaden the noise a bit for all our sakes.

If you can't do the fireplace, it may not be worth your while to spend very much on the walls - would be like doing the walls but leaving a door open, IYSWIM?

that thin wall system looks really handy. I presume you would drywall and skim over the top. Noise will get through the gaps, so very important to do the difficult bits as well.

I suppose it would be possible to take out the stove, line the fireback or cavity and fit an extra baffle or two above the stove, but this would have to be fireproof and heat resistant, so not the rubber sheet. The soundproofing co's probably have a method.

I still think that if you lift a few floorboards or take off the skirting you will be shocked at the quality of the brickwork revealed.

Sound travels by air and structures. Sound is vibration of molecules.

Cheapest solutions are to seal every gap there is. There are always gaps...

Then increase the density of the separating walls as much as possible.

PJ's comment above is very valid.

Thanks everyone. Yes, if we do decide to do it, we would take the skirting off and sort that. We have floorboards so it shouldn't be too hard to get under them. We definitely need to investigate the fireplace options more to get something fireproof.

I just realised that I linked to the same product twice in my first post. The second one was supposed to be this.

great advice here, thanks