Hi All, just wanted to ask some advise please.   I will be laying a 20mm engineered floor over an old concrete subfloor in an old apartment block. The existing floor has old parquet flooring stuck down with bitumen so i will be sealing with SBR once flooring is removed and will level with SLC.   My question is what would you recommend to lay on top to maximise soundproofing before laying the engineered floor.   I need to be careful with not adding too much height if possible as skirting are remaining as is, scotia beading will be fitted.   Would just adding some mass loade ..read more

Hello Everyone,  I will like to ask if anyone within this forum can  give me more insight to SIP Panels. I have some SIP panels which I removed after installing it on a site, but can the same panel  be reused elsewhere based on the fact that the panel was removed by cutting through the timbers between each SIP Panels. I will like to salvage the removed panels and see if someone may have more experience on how to go about it.  I must say I am new to this site and I have little knowledge in construction so please treat me gently. Thanks for your time and support in advance ..read more

I need to block the sound of me talking and my laugh going from my ground floor office to the room above. My plan is to add another layer of plasterboard to my ceiling, stick some dense material between the floors, and then mastic gaps between chipboard sheets before relaying the floor covering.   At the moment 100mm batts of 036 Steico Flex (60kg/m2) is working out cheaper per m2 than Rockwool RWA45 (45kg/m2) or RW3 (60kg/m2) which is unavailable except by the pallet load. Knauf's Rocksilk products are likewise hard to find. Has anyone experience of using this for acoustic insulation ..read more

Hi we are in desperate need of help.  Our neighbour had work done to their house 6 months ago (we think new air conditioning and maybe a heat pump) and since then we are being woken up multiple times during the week. We approached them but they will not entertain that the problem is them. So at a huge expense we hired sound engineering company to monitor our home for 7 days. We did this twice. The conclusion is below and attached are the charts showing the noise effects,   Does anyone have any advice /recommendation of how we can soundproof our home or block the vibration to our prop ..read more

As some of you know, I was a little unhappy with my library windows - yes, they were rated at 40-45dB (with 40dB being a more realistic measurement of sound reduction for typical street noise) but these are first-floor 2mx2m windows overlooking a sometimes busy two-way street.   So, I had a second set of windows installed at about 15cm from the existing windows - single-pane heavy safety glass (high-transparency of course). They are rated at 36-38dB, though again the frame takes some off that. I had calculated the resonance frequency of the resulting system would be 340/(2*pi))*sqrt((1.22 ..read more

As you might be aware, most passivhaus internal doors leave a decent strip of air gap below them, for ventilation reasons.  But my telescopic pocket door from eclisse is taking this to a bit of an extreme - when 'closed' there is a 20mm gap between the door planks (not even mentioning near the floor)     Is there anything we can do here? Maybe some 'strip' system at the far front of door 1 and far back of door 2:   Or will this not structurally improve things because there are too many other air gaps? Frankly I'm surprised these doors are designed in such an 'open' way ..read more

My warm roof with PVC membrane is quite noisy when it rains. Almost seems to leave me inside a drum as the noise comes through the 150mm PIR and plywood deck beneath.   I am also having recessed downlights and speakers in the ceiling beneath.   So my plan is to stick a layer of tecsound mass loaded vinyl to the underside of the ply between the joists. Then a layer of 50mm rock wool. This will leave me enough ceiling void for the recessed lights.   Does this seem a reasonable approach (as I really don’t want to mess about with resilient bar/clip systems ..read more

I must have read nearly every post on here regarding sound insulation and I'm still none the wiser.   In our timber partition walls (89mm CLS) I was planning on filling with 75mm Isover acoustic roll or RWA45 then sound boarding both sides. I've since read on here that the denser acoustic stuff has no real benefit compared to normal loft roll? There was a link to some study posted here which showed the results.    Is the denser acoustic stuff worth the extra premium? Also does anyone know of a cheap place to get some? My BM only stock 100mm and 50mm non acoustic, just loft roll ..read more

I'm about to build internal stud walls in my house and want to get the best acoustics I can out of them.   I'm not sure what to fill the void with though - do I fill all 100mm with mineral wool? Do I fill half? Do I fill half with dense mineral wool and the other half with lighter mineral wool?   I read conflicting things on here - any advice?   Current plan is: 2 layers of 12.5mm acoustic plasterboard attached to 75mm studs at 300mm centres on a 100mm base plate creating a void - fill to be decided) (with a rubber layer underneath the baseplates and between wall plates and the ..read more

Hi. I was wondering if anyone can recommend an eco friendly material for sound insulation that isn’t ridiculously expensive?    We are having a MBC twin wall timber frame with warmcell but it has only just occurred to me I need to insulate the interior stud walls for sound proofing. I completely missed this off the budget!   any advice?  ..read more