Ceiling Noise Reduction

[pBay]

We have a ground floor Edwardian maisonette that, over the years has had some but not all the ceilings replaced. The people who live upstairs are not especially noisy, they are just living. Problem is we can hear every footstep and every scraping chair and not to mention them using the loo. They do have carpets upstairs in most rooms. Looking in the cavity between our ceiling and their floor it is empty with no insulation. Does anyone have advise on what to do. Are we best to pull down our ceiling and fill it with insulation or should we go for one of these additional accoustic ceilings. Do they work?

thanks

 

[Mark]

this has just been covered in some detail here :
http://www.askthetrades.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1154373792/0

When was the house converted ?

 

[pBay]

Thanks a lot. I'll take a look.

It's not a conversion and is actually purpose built that wa. We live in an area in north London that has about 3 or 4 streets that are all maisonettes.

 

[Penners]

Here's another useful website
http://www.soundstop.co.uk/?gclid=CNah1bKO04YCFQlREQodIAJ07Q

 

[Johneds]

pBay, underlays are all very well but you need to pursued your neighbour to take their carpets up and fit the stuff and replace etc. Not usually very convenient!

If you seriously want to solve your problem, and don't mind spending some cash, I would recommend you remove your ceiling, fill the gap between joists with 200mm of mineral wool, tack a material called Ecoustiquilt to the bottom of the joists, fit resilient channels to the underside of the joists (fixing through the ecoustiqulit) and finish off with 2 layers of 12.5mm dbcheck plasterboard fixed with staggered joints and sealed with acoustic sealant at the edges.

Now, this is not the absolutely ideal installation - for that you would need to add a suspended ceiling and have complete isolation between the floor above and the ceiling below - but it will work very well and may even cut out all noticeable noise completely.

The mineral wool is not strictly necessary but since you are compromising it is worth going the extra to make up for it and it is a sensible measure purely for thermal insulation. (you are at present paying to keep upstairs nice a toasty) It also does not cost that much.

I can vouch for Ecoustiquilt. I have specified it on a lot of projects over the last 12 months or so and the test results have been excellent on all occasions. Much better than the more conventional materials.

One thing that might reduce the effectiveness of the system (in fact any system, including underlays) is sound transmission that flanks around the edge of the floor. If you have heavy walls then this should not be a problem. But if the walls are lightweight - i.e. thermalite block - then you might get some noise flanking around. If so nothing will stop this except lining your walls with another sound system.

 

[bournonite]

I have to agree with this - its important to make sure the channel is isolated from the joists by rubber/ foam to stop shock transmitting, and I've been told by numerous experts to leave an air gap in the joists - ie, not to totally fill the void with insulation.. It's a long job though!!

Pete