Bloody wedding sound proofing...

[Movinghouseatlast]

We have just had the floor between on ensuite bathroom and the holiday annexe we rent out done. The soundproofing was so bad that we hadn't been able to use our ensuite at all.

However, you can still hear everything so having spent £6k on it (including a new bathroom) it is unusable at the moment.

The worst thing is that we can hear our bath filling up, our sink tap running and, noisiest of all, the toilet flushing when we are downstairs in the holiday let. It sounds like it is all happening in the same room.

The builder used acoustic rock wool and acoustic plaster board. It is all tiled on top now so we can't add anything.to the floor. Every step can still be heard downstairs.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I'm at my wits end. Thanks.

You need separation and mass to get big sound improvements

Mass which you’ve added doesn’t make a lot of difference unless it’s massively thick

My walls are 19inch thick and they probably out perform a standard 9inch solid wall which would reduce sound by around 40db by around another 10db. So not double the figure.

It may in some instances make the sound worse.

Eg if the gap between your floors was plasterboard, standard wool, air gap, floorboards, tiles. Most sounds would travel easiest on the joists to the plasterboard below. If you fill the gap with solid wool which has been compressed with no airgap you now transfer the sound will travel just as easy on the joists and easier in the now packed cavity.

Also footsteps, and tap sounds etc will be structural sounds as the items will be in direct contact with the floor. These sounds can only be reduced by large amounts with separation.

You’ll probably find the airborne talking sounds are reduced but it’s doing nothing for everything else.

Get a speaker put it in the middle of the room off the floor and set it to a volume you can hear upstairs. Do the same test with the speaker at the same volume against the wall And floor and it will be much louder upstairs.

You need to float the floor or ceiling below and make sure the services aren’t touching the walls or bridging the cavity in the float to isolate the sound sorry.

Are there sound specialist companies that can come and do a survey for you?

You could try adding another layer of acoustic plasterboards with the joints not overlapping with the first layer. We had the ceiling of our bedroom redone this way with DD’s room above and can hear a lot less than before.

However our main issue was footsteps. It sounds more like yours is plumbing noise. Where does the plumbing run, does it go through the holiday let?