Noisy Neighbour Wall Soundproofing Success Story

Soundproofing a straightforward solid wall seems to be a very common theme at the moment as The Soundproofing Store has been inundated with this type of query over the past couple of months or so.

Just sitting here and reflecting on the month I figured it would be good time to share one of my most memorable solid wall problems and I will highlight what solution was used for that scenario.

The Scenario

A customer called and sounded desperate about soundproofing his bedroom wall and explained the problem to us in full detail.

Students had recently moved into the house next door and the person residing in the bedroom adjacent to the customers bedroom unfortunately liked to play music late into the night and sometimes into the early hours. This was affecting the sleep of the customer and essentially affecting his performance at work, so he was desperate to do something about it.

After exploring the sound types further, we determined that the sound heard was a mixture of airborne and vibration noise. Impact noise is commonly caused by vibrations arriving from the music bass, whilst the airborne noise combines to cause the noise problems.

The Solution

In this scenario there are two systems that we can look at which will significantly reduce the noise problem through a party wall. However, given that the customer was hearing excessive bass noise, and the noise was made up of a mixture of airborne and vibration noise (due to the high levels of noise) we ruled out our standard Pro-Sound™ SoundBoard 4  system and focused on the higher performing ReductoClip System.

The ReductoClip System

To put the ReductoClip system into simple words, it is a newly built isolated stud wall system that incorporates vibration absorption technology with a combination of high density materials to block airborne noise.

Build a new frame (standard 50mm x 50mm is what we performed our testing on), but feel free to use a thicker frame. This is created 10mm away from the existing wall and on the outside edge of the frame a self-adhesive Isolation Strip is applied. It is important that you allow the 10mm gap, so don’t fix the frame to the wall but instead attach it to the ceiling, floor and adjoining walls.

The next stage is to fill between the timber batons with acoustic mineral wool (this is used to stop sound echoing and resonating in the newly created sealed chamber). As you can imagine, leaving a void will allow sound to echo, resonate and amplify noise, so imagine shouting down a cardboard tube at this point and the sound escaping can be much louder. The acoustic mineral wool will put a stop to the majority of this occurring. For example, fill your cardboard tube with cotton wool and then try to shout down it and this will stop sound amplifying.

ReductoClip Wall Soundproofing Solution - Overview

How to soundproof a wall with the ReductoClip Independent Wall Solution

ReductoClips are then fitted directly to the frame at specific spacing's. Then attach the Reducto Furring Bars into the ReductoClips and lay them across horizontally to finish the frame. Any vibrations that manage to cross into the wall are stopped at this point by the ReductoClips (front line troops).

The final stage is to add mass to reduce the airborne sound.The trick here is to mix and match the dense materials. Sound travels at different frequencies, so where one material may be fantastic at reducing a certain frequency it may be poor with others. To get maximum density and noise reduction The Soundproofing Store will recommend fixing a layer of Acoustic PlasterBoard (standard plasterboard doesn’t contain enough mass) to the newly installed ReductoClip frame and then add a layer of FlexiSound 5 which is a specialist self-adhesive visco elastic material, designed to replace lead. To finish off we would then add another layer of Acoustic Plaster Board. The diagram below shows a cross section of the system, so you can view the layers.

Fully Isolated Clip and Bar System (120mm Thick):

1. Independent Stud Frame - 10mm air gap isolates the soundproofing from the offending wall for best possible sound reduction performance

2. Isolation Strip - isolates from surrounding surfaces to reduce flanking vibration

3. ReductoClips - decouple the mass layers from the frame and act like a shock absorbing suspension system to dampen high levels of sound energy and vibration

4. ReductoClip Furring Channels - extra wide to make fixing acoustic plasterboards quicker and easier

5. Acoustic Mineral Wool - dampens sound within the frame cavity to stop sound amplifying

6. Acoustic Plasterboard - (2 layers) to increase the mass of the wall. More mass and density than standard plasterboard but with the same finishing and decorating techniques

7. FlexiSound 5 - Anti-Vibration membrane to add further mass to the wall. A different type of mass to reduce different sound frequencies to the other layers. FlexiSound also helps to dampen sound energy and vibration

The customer in this case used his own contractor as the system is fairly straight forward to install and after a successful installation went on to enjoy his sleep again, even buying me a case of beer as a way of saying thank you!