mary45 said:
I have just moved into my first house in Cork and all is well except for the level of sound coming through the walls from my neighbour. I can hear everything, conversations, doors closing, phone ringing etc. I have been in contact with the builder but no joy. What can I do?
Re: Sound Proofing Sitting Room?? Soundproofing is not a very technical or complicated job, but be careful. Ive seen a few sound proofing jobs that have been done only to make the problem worse. Sometimes the more vibrating layers that you put against the party wall of semidetached house or an apartment, the better the drum / speaker effect and the greater the tendency for sound to amplify from next door. alot of its due to complete ignorance of some builders
Better to understand whats happening first.
Alot of party walls are giving problems at the moment because of of the method of construction used over the past few years. Block Party walls are not plastered in the traditional fashion but they are applied with big sheets of plasterboard that are taped along their joints and line plastered along the butt joints. Problems stem from small amounts of energy making its way through blockwork (usually badly built porous blockwall where mortar beds are not complete) and accumulating in the 0-5mm+ gap between the board and the blockwork. The sound is amplified and comes into the sitting room etc.
Solving the problem
Tell the builder exactly what you want, and how to do it. Its not a specialist job so dont rush in to this. Direct labour will work out better quality wise.
1.Get the right man/men i.e an electrician to remove the switches/tv points from the wall before the job,
2.You could strip the plasterboard off the wall yourself, Get a plasterer to plaster the wall with sand/cement mix.
3.Theres a great composite fabric backed plasterboard (2 inches thick)on the market specifically designed to reduce sound transmission. This should be rigidly fixed using mushroom plugs to the wall. Think its called Rockwall, but will check
4. Get a plasterer back to skim coat the plasterboard
5. Get the eletrician back to connect the sockets/switches/tv points etc into the wall
6 Make sure the board is sealed where it meets the floor sidewalls and ceiling
7. Take up a couple of floor boards in the room above the sitting room (alongside the party wall )and stuff the space between the floor joists and the wall with fibre glass. This will absorb any sound.
If its a new house (built within last 5yrs)you could ask the County Council Building Control Authority to serve an enforcement notice on the builder to do the work with no cost to yourself. You must prove that the party wall has failed the Regulation requirement regarding sound ( will take a professional report from acoustic engineer) before enforcement notice can be served.
The Regulations require that party walls between dwellings must have "reasonable resistance to sound"