Sound insulation wall

Tips for improving the sound insulation wall:

– Sealing sound leaks: Seams, air ducts, ventilation and gaps around partition walls.  Avoid gaps around intermediate door and window frames.

– You can reduce airborne and impact noise by using a sound-insulating front wall. This may not make contact with the ceiling, floor and structural wall. A so-called mass-spring principle.

– Damping sound at the source with sound absorption. Such as acoustic panels or plates. Think for example also of a rug to reduce contact sound with the floor.

Soundproofing wall

For good sound insulation, it is important to determine whether you are dealing with structure-borne noise or airborne noise. Structure-borne noise in particular is difficult to solve.

It is always important to identify the source. And what is the weakest link in the partition walls, ceiling and/or floor? You want to avoid installing expensive new retaining walls and it turning out that the sound leak lies elsewhere.

Sound insulation wall against neighbour noise

In order to properly reduce neighbour noise, the relevant walls should be reinforced. To clarify: If you double the mass of a wall, the sound transmission is reduced by about 3 dB. Consider, for example, EASYmass ground plates.

To reduce walking noises from the upstairs neighbours, the floor itself must be tackled. Vibration insulation or a floating floor should be installed at the upstairs neighbours.

Structure-borne noise

Structure-borne noise is a vibration that propagates in the structure. Once structure-borne noise is present in the construction, it is difficult to reduce it.

Examples of structure-borne noise are slamming doors, footsteps, drum sounds and bass sounds.

Solutions against structure-borne noise

The only really good solution to counteract impact structure-borne is to build a box-in-box. That means you put a disconnected room in a room. This is usually not possible and also complex and expensive.

A frequently chosen solution is the installation of a retaining wall. Ideally, this should be positioned free of contact with the floor, ceiling and other walls.

A good retaining wall consists of spring brackets, absorption plates as filling (EASYpol polyester wool), and a double layer of plaster. The risk of flanking noise is, however, present.

Flanking noise refers to a vibration (sound) that still enters the room along other walls, floor and ceiling. This is therefore indirect noise pollution via adjacent surfaces. To prevent this, a box-in-box is again the best solution.

Airborne noise

Airborne noise is sound that mainly propagates through the air, such as voice, sound from a TV, etcetera. When there is noise nuisance through airborne noise, one or more of the following situations is usually the case:

• The wall separating the house is very light (for example, a one stone wide wall)
• There are gaps in the wall separating the house

When it comes to airborne noise, it is particularly important to check for gaps. These occur at the connections between the floor and ceiling and the adjacent walls.

Here too, ventilation openings and/or heating pipes are weak spots. It is important to seal these gaps between the floor and other weak spots as much as possible.

In case of nuisance from airborne noise, a floating retaining wall is highly recommended. With a retaining wall, very high sound insulation values ​​are achieved for sound insulation walls. We offer sustainable EASYpol polyester wool as cavity filling of the retaining wall.

Discuss it

Before you take any measure against noise from neighbours, the most important measure is: discuss it. This is often the quickest, easiest and cheapest solution to prevent nuisance from neighbour noise.

Recognise that noise nuisance is bothersome to both yourself and your neighbours. Sound goes both ways.

If you are bothered by airborne noise from your neighbours, there is a good chance that they will also be bothered by the sound of your voice. So you both benefit from good agreements and a good soundproof wall.

Ruben de Visser

Acoustics specialist

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