Advice for sound-rated apartment door?

We are interested in upgrading the front door to our apartment (between our condo and the common area hallway) to something that will do a better job at blocking hallway noise. We hear all the hallway conversations, footfalls, exterior door openings and closings, etc and our dog does too good a job at “protecting” us with barking 🙂

Any advice on minimum STC ratings we should look for, if we need to get an entire pre-hung setup with the jambs and all or can just replace the door itself, good brands of doors, or anything else would be very appreciated!

katerina

in General Discussion 2 years and 9 months ago

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justinromeu26 | 2 years and 9 months ago

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so i can tell you this. i mention above where i tried to apply something to a door once (like in the 1990’s). what i did was i bought a heavy vinyl like sound deadening sheet from McMaster Carr and tried to put it on the machine (hvac) room side of an office door. i applied it with washers and sheet metal screws. it did not sit fully flat and it did not work so well against the noise of the machines and of course i had done nothing to the frame. i later learned from other building professionals that nothing will deaden that sort of sound from those machines (on a concrete floor) but distance which we did not have. i do wonder if in your situation and sound deadening membrane could be laminated to the back of the door using contact cement. i bet it would kill the noise from the hall. i am not really offering my services for this as it would be someone experimental but i will say this, there are probably a lot more available products out there than there were 25 years ago.

also there is something else that has not been mentioned. a lot of these steel doors and frames are made for concrete installation (brick to brick, gypsum block or pour concrete). i am not sure if the modern frames have it, but there used to be a plate that could be removed so concrete can be poured into the frame to help hold it in the brick installation. fire proofed it as well. now a days, these are made to go around sheet rock walls and they tighten to the rock. they may not have a plate you can remove (i just looked on the ‘net and did not see a plate). Know that the area in the frame is hollow except where the drywall is and that is not up to the edge of the frame, it sits back. what you can do is drill a few holes in that frame and inject expandable foam insulation in there. i bet that would do something.

i am also wondering if some holes can be drilled into the door and some put in there. not too much, it might expand the door. sand off the foam that bleeds out of the holes, clean them up with epoxy, and paint.

of course what i have just said is “experimental” but it might work. i would check the net and see if anyone has done anything like any of this before.

Steve
www.brownstonehomeinspection.com
www.thetinkerswagon.com

justinromeu26 | 2 years and 9 months ago

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I just saw that this was a metal door. even the fire rated metal doors are not that great at blocking sound. you need something to deaden it. and the frame as well. i would look into solid wood doors packed with something.

katerina | 2 years and 9 months ago

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Yes, I think you might have an automatic door bottom- we had one installed on our current metal door and honestly I’m not sure it made much difference for sound, but it definitely helped with general insulation so we aren’t cooling/heating the hallway! I really appreciate all the advice here!

annep | 2 years and 9 months ago

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My door opens up onto the common hallway and a couple years ago Brooklyn Insulation & Soundproofing installed a device inside my door that is magnetically activated so that when the door is closed it drops down and seals the gap between the bottom of the door and floor. They also added a rubber sealant around the inside of the door. It helped tremendously — but I can still hear doors opening/closing + muted conversations. They just don’t sound like they’re happening in my living room anymore.

justinromeu26 | 2 years and 9 months ago

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also, they make gypsum filled doors for fire proofing. i have not dealt with one in years so i am not sure how they compare to mdf or solid wood but i think they would be better over plain old solid wood.

keep in mind, the old solid wood doors in these houses have panels that are only a 1/4″ thick in many cases. so when colonial or stoopsitter talk about solid doors, they mean in the modern sense with something else in them. a solid 19th century door is no better than a hollow core door.

it might be possible to remove panels in an old door, and make new panels with some sort of insulation sandwiched in the middle (1/8″ skin/3/8″ insulation/1/8″ skin) and reset them perhaps with thinner panel molding. but you would have to really like your historic wood doors to go through that expense. i would try everything else first and even consider a new door, first.

also, a note on mdf doors. they are trimmed out around the edges with solid wood. this wood is what the screws grab into. sometimes people trim this doors down so much they remove that wood or th ey jam something in between the door and the frame and someone closes the door and the screws pull out. this is a pain in the neck to repair and beyond most people today. for this reason i do not recommend mdf doors but they are very good looking. if they are not abused they should last.

www.brownstonehomeinspection.com
www.thetinkerswagon.com

stoopsitter | 2 years and 9 months ago

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A very skilled carpenter I know says MDF doors are much more sound deadening than wood and come in different depths. We have a couple of MDF doors and, once painted, no one would know they aren’t wood. But agree with comments above: sealing around the door is probably the most critical factor.

justinromeu26 | 2 years and 9 months ago

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I’ve tried this with varying degrees of success including putting a sound proof sheet on one side of an office door.

If you have a bare floor with no saddle under the door, i would start with a sweep. Insulated stop molding can help. And from there, you might have to consider a new door. Not only a solid door but something with insulating qualities inside it.

I have been in a lot of these buildings and some people have the situation you describe and others don’t and these folks all have a mix of old door frames and doors and modern metal doors and one thing that i think makes a difference (but have not really thought about until now) is the accoustics of the hallway. Empty hallways transmit sound. Perhaps carpet or something on the walls can absorb some of the sound in the common area?

Steve
Www.brownstonehomeinspection.com

JohnHancock | 2 years and 9 months ago

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Usually in a recording studio where sound isolation is important a heavy wood or metal door is used but probably just as important or even more so is the importance of an airtight heavy rubber seal that separates the 2 spaces completely.
These rubber gaskets are heavy duty and your door needs to fit really snug.

colonialrevival | 2 years and 9 months ago

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A solid door will help, with as much mass as possible, but doors are weak points because they are surrounded by places where air can get in. Anywhere that allows for air also allows for sound. You may look into decoupling your interior drywall using a fresh set of studs mounted to the top plate and the sill plate with RSIC isolating clips.