Has anyone ever soundproofed a walls ajoining house?

[Movinghouseatlast]

I am getting a bit stressed about my new house.

I have lived in a detached house for nearly 20 years. Before that my flat drove me mad when I could hear neighbours.

I know I am.probably over sensitive about noise. But I can't bear it.

I convinced myself that halls ajoining Victorian would be noise free because it was all we could afford that was on the market. We have been trying to move for 2 ling years, with 3 fabulous houses falling through.

The house we have bought is perfect in terms of location, and I love the house itself. It was the sensible choice too.

But I can't get away from the fact it's a semi now I have moved in. I have heard music/tv through the wall a few times and it has made me so anxious.

I don't even know if it's possible to put a stud wall up but I am.very tempted to do it.

I'm.getting anxious about what would happen if the neighbours move and we get much noisier people in.

I just wondered if anyone has done this, and has it worked?

Thanks.

Sorry, autocorrect cock up. I meant HALLS ajoining.

You could put cupboards there so at least you are getting extra storage.

Built in cupboards up to the ceiling.

My parents soundproof their walls with great results.
They built a whole false wall connected to floor and ceiling. Stuffed it with acoustic wool and 2 layers of staggered joint plasterboard. They lost about 15cm of room space to do this. But now they can’t hear anything from next door. They own the property next door which they rent as their sole pension pot. so they could test with a radio, and I can confirm At 70db you can’t hear the radio even if your ear to the wall. This is about a 35db improvement on the previous level. They can still hear doors and impact noise at pretty much the orginal level.
The bonus being they did this room reduction on the neighbours side and removed all the plug sockets from the adjoining walls. I’m sure they’d still hear nightmare neighbours.

I plan to do a similar thing but can’t afford to lose as much space. I’m going to use genie clips/resilent bar/vinyl and a smaller cavity with a space lose of about 80mm. If I get half of their results I’ll be please.

As your halls ajoined. I guess you have a typical narrow and long hall? This would be hard to sound proof especially if the stairs are on the party wall.
Do you hear the sounds in the rooms that are not ajoined as well as ajoined?
If you do it could be you share a floor or wall cavity with next door. Which you would need to sound proof 1st but you’ll need to keep the floor ventilated to avoid damp. I’ve not got any experience in this sorry. But you’d need to look into this 1st if you’re hearing everyday noises from next door in non ajoining rooms

Your typical Victorian house will have single solid brick part wall (2 layers of brick) this should stop 40-50db so typically the rooms not ajoined you shouldn’t hear anything as the sound will have to through a further air space and brick wall/wooden door to get to you. But if they’re blasting the tv or music at over 80db you’ll never stop it but for normal listening volume you should be fine in regards to walls.

My advice would be to check the floor and wall cavities 1st if applicable.

Thanks so much.

Yes, when I hear stuff it is in non ajoined rooms. There is only one ajoined room which is a bedroom on our side and bathroom on theirs.

The hall is quite big, stairs are quite wide really but no, I don't think I could put a false wall there.

I have seen wallpaper that is so say soundproof. And underlay. Don't know if they are worth buying.

What I am worried about is getting people who do blast the music out. I just don't know what I'd do.

Wallpaper won’t help sorry.

If you hear stuff in nonadjoining rooms I’d think you have a open cavity somewhere. Or your neighbours are very loud.

I have a solid floor and I’ve sealed my floor cavity above when I did my floorboard so this isn’t an issue but let’s say my neighbouring is hoovering I picked this as it’s pretty standard a hoover is about 80db. In my adjoining rooms it’s about 35/40db so my walls are blocking 40/45 dB of this sound. If I move to the next room over I can’t hear it atall as my internal walls are blocking it.

If you had an open void in the floor or ceiling above like some houses do. The sound would just travel to all of the rooms only diminished the one time so would be near enough 40db in each room. And in some cases it may act like a drum skin.

You can normally tell if you have a cavity under the floor by seeing air brick at below floor level.

When you hear the neighbours is the sound the same/similar volume in the hall and the non adjoining rooms?

Yes, same in hall as in non ajoining rooms.

I’d definitely look into the terms “common floor” and “flanking noise”

As it appears this is what you’re experiencing. The sound should be greatly diminished in rooms which aren’t ajoined. Which is the whole acctraction in halls attached.

Definitely get a sound specialist in. You don’t want to waste money on wall sound proofing if your issue is with the ceiling or floor.

But forgot your previous post. Some soundproof underlays on carpets help a lot.

But wallpaper is way too thin with 0 mass or decoupling properties. It would be like prit sticking a newspaper to your windows.

we had a massive bedroom, and we made one end of it into an office. When we had it done, we used standard stud walls and plasterboard, but one requirement was that it was soundproofed, so they packed the stud wall with sound insulation.

We needed it sound proof because dh works from home and occaisonally has to talk to people at 2 am. Once he shuts the door, I can't hear a word in our bedroom, on the other side of the wall.

So if you need to do it, it works, but you will need to lose 10 -15 cms of space to do it.