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Sound Insulation
Family

Making Your Home Quieter 

Good attention to design and construction detailing are critical to making your timber framed home a quiet and peaceful refuge from both airborne noises such as voices, music, lawn mowers and traffic and impact noises from footsteps and moving furniture.

The use of any single material alone will not ensure a peaceful environment as it is the use of good design and construction detail as well as effective material choice that compliment each other for a successful outcome.

Below are some tips on the most cost effective ways to avoid and minimise disturbance from noises which are produced inside and outside the home:

 

DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION DETAILING

Interior noise 

• Position home theatres, laundries, stairs, kitchens and children’s play areas away from sensitive living or sleeping areas.

• Place relatively quite areas such as bedrooms or lounge rooms next to each other.

• Locate doors of internal rooms so they are not directly opposite each other.

• Locate waste pipes and plumbing away from sound sensitive living and sleeping areas.


Tips

Place built-in wardrobes on the wall between the room and noise areas.

Bulk insulation works just as well as acoustic insulation when the external surfaces of the wall or floor/ceiling are not connected.

Don’t mount speakers off walls.

Materials choices

An important point to consider in reducing noise disturbance is that sound finds the weakest gap. It doesn’t matter how well an individual building element is rated (building systems are commonly given a sound insulation rating called an “Rw value”) for noise reduction - if there are air gaps for noise to get through this will undo all of the good work. 


Tip

If the wall is not air tight then it is not sound tight.  


For example a standard interior hollow core doors does not have a very high sound insulation value so sound can travel through and around the door, into or out of the room. In this case, seal the door frame and/or replace it with a solid core door. This will make it more effective at reducing noise than increasing the sound insulation of the wall.

Other materials choices that can be made to reduce noise include:

• Using carpet and underlay.

• Where hard surface floors (tiles or decorative timber coverings) are used on the first floor, float the floor coverings on the structural floor by the use of a resilient material (acoustic matting).

• Using furniture cups under chairs and tables which are moved frequently.

• Adding bulk insulation into cavity construction will increase noise reduction. For further improvement seperate the two external surfaces of the wall or floor/ceiling. Refer to plasterboard manufacturers for further information on how separation can be achieved. 

• Adding an extra layer or denser plasterboard to wall or ceilings of the rooms will increase its noise reduction performance.


Tip

Most plasterboard manufacturers have purpose made plasterboard that can improve noise reduction. Refer to their product literature for further information.

Noise within the room 

Where there are many hard surfaces within the room noise can bounce around from the wall to the ceiling, to wall and to floor, and so on, by reflection and it can also be reinforced. Where this occurs the addition of sounding absorbing material will lessen the noise.  Using soft furnishings such as cushions, sofas, curtains, carpets and fabric wall or ceiling linings will help to absorb and reduce this noise.

Note that this will reduce the noise that is generated in the room but it will not reduce the noise entering the room.

 

Outdoor noise

The sound reducing value of an insulated timber framed brick veneer home is as good if not better than double brick construction at reducing noise from outside sources. A typical external wall for a brick veneered house will contain 90 mm timber stud frame with insulation batts (R1.5) and 10mm plasterboard internal liner. This system has an Rw value = 59. Double clay brick masonry has an Rw value ≥ 50. (Rw is a measure of sound reduction with higher values being better).

However, as described above, sound finds the weakest gap into your home. For example, standard single pane windows do not have very high sound insulation so sound from outside the home will enter the home via the window. Cost effective improvements can be made by sealing the frame perimeter and/or replacement with thicker glass.

Other things that can be done to reduce noise from the outside entering the home include:

• Locating relatively quite areas such as bedrooms or lounge rooms away from busy roads, air conditioning units, pool pumps and neighbours’ outside entertaining areas.

• Placing windows and doors so they are not directly opposite your neighbours’ windows and doors.

• Minimising the use of hard exterior surfaces such as paving as this reflects sound rather than absorbs it.

• Place a fence or barrier between the outside noise source and the window. Barriers could be the use of screening plants.



Tip

Where outside noise can’t be avoided use water features or screening plants that rustle when the wind blows. These sounds of nature are much preferred and may mask some of the outside noise. 

 

Don’t forget about the roof and ceiling. You may be using the best walls and windows but the roof and ceiling also reduce noise coming into a house. Gaps in roof tiles can also increase external noise levels - the use of insulation in the ceiling will help.

Regulations

The BCA Building Code of Australia (BCA) does not have specific requirements for noise for single family dwellings. There are specific minimum requirements between adjoining dwellings (ie multi-residential dwellings).

 

More information
 
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