Best Sound Insulation?
We have an exposed brick wall in a brownstone and we can hear perfectly the next door neighbors. We are decided to put sheetrock on the walls of the parlor floor. Any recommendation for sound insulation? Someone told me about Homasote, someone else about spray foam, Quiet Rock… Any experience? What is the best sound…
We have an exposed brick wall in a brownstone and we can hear perfectly the next door neighbors. We are decided to put sheetrock on the walls of the parlor floor. Any recommendation for sound insulation? Someone told me about Homasote, someone else about spray foam, Quiet Rock… Any experience? What is the best sound insulation material?
Never. Really.
Someone who would advocate this has clearly not looked at or perhaps simply doesn’t understand independent third party acoustical test data.
Really? Never use 4 tubes per sheet? Really?
Shakes-head/rolls-eyes… blowhard’s
Also, you would never use 4 tubes of a damping compound on a 4×8 sheet of any building material. That is 2x the reasonable coverage. Not only a complete waste of your money, but performance will plummet with a damping layer that thick.
Hmmm. Several answers presented here, but none are asking necessary questions. Be careful to look at the credentials of those you choose to rely on for information. You are diagnosing a problem that may have several distinctly different solutions. There is no one-size-fits-all solution as too many think, unfortunately.
What are your walls are made from? This is the first fundamental question to answer if you are going to solve your issue. How can anyone simply say product X will work if they have no idea what you’re up against? From a professional perspective, you cannot. This is what separates a building material center from a consultant.
For example if the wall is concrete block, you cannot simply add expensive drywall or rolled rubber. If your walls are gypsum block known as Pyrobar, you cannot add these materials, either. Someone will surely sell you these expensive products but that is not to say that they will perform correctly.
The next question would be what types of sounds are you hearing? Are you able to hear very high frequency sounds like a child’s voice? This could be an indication of a seal failure in the wall. Acoustic sealant may solve the problem. Are the sounds you hear strictly low frequency, muffled thumps, etc? This would indicate a strong structure-borne conduction. Not as easily eradicated.
What about the floor and ceiling framing? Sound is always conducted over and under a wall. Your neighbor’s noises are not 100% traveling through the wall. Could be 40% is sneaking under or over the wall in question. There are ways to tell.
If we assume you already have an air cavity between you and your neighbor (likely), then you will definitely NOT want to introduce another air cavity. This is a common misconception. There are piles of lab research on this topic: http://www.soundproofingcompany.com/library/articles/triple_leaf_effect/
The point is that you have a significant sound isolation problem. If you want it fixed, you’ll clearly need more analysis before the proper solution is revealed.
Be careful about creating dead airspace cavity. If you do this wrong, it will make your noise concerns even worse. Dead airspace works best by sacrificing at least 3″ -6″ of space! That is a lot of space wasted and if you create a “triple leaf” wall, you will have basically built a “wall drum”.
I’d skip the dead airspace and instead use mass (quietrock 525, greenglue-4tubespersheet, quietrock 525)
Where to buy quietrock:
Prince Lumber Co.
406 West 15th St (9th Ave Corner)
212.777.1150
Strober Building Supply?? (Brooklyn Location)??
The most important part is not the product you use but how the barrier is built. Sound is a wave, and it gets transmitted through objects to greater or lesser degrees. Nails or screws that attach the layers of rock can wind up transmitting the sound if they are allowed to touch the existing party wall.
You want to stand off the existing wall and create an air space as Ibis mentions with nothing penetrating the party wall, particularly nails or screws. And you want to seal this space off meticulously–caulk everything.
If you do this part well, and if you are talking about regular neighbor noise, you’ll see real improvement with normal 5/8 sheetrock.
Thanks! Anybody has tried some of these products: http://www.audimutesoundproofing.com ? Perhaps is a little more economic than Quietrock.
We had the exact same problem, and we used Quietrock 525 with excellent results. When we framed the wall we left a 3/4″ space between the party wall and the studs, as air space really helps. We filled the space between the studs with Ultratouch cotton batt insulation. Then one layer of quietrock 525. We used acoustical sealant and putty to fill every gap and insulate electrical outlets. The only problem is that we lost a few inches of space in that room, but the room is 15′ wide so we don’t really see a difference, and I think that’s the way to go to get good soundproofing. You won’t find these materials at Lowes or HD. We bought everything from Marjam.
I have done a lot of research on this topic and the materials involved. I think the best material for the job that will also take the least amount of wall space would be two-layers of quietrock 525 and greenglue with 4-tubes per sheetrock between the quietrock.