Soundproofing a ceiling -- does decoupling really work?

[@Goni983]

Thanks for this, going to be doing some ceiling work soon. Good info to consider

[@soundproofist]

Glad it was useful. We did this exact project in my building, and although it was excellent at blocking noise transmission between floors (like talking, snoring, etc.) there was this one glitch with the impact noise from downstairs. It wasn't because the project was done incorrectly. It simply couldn't address all noise paths with just one solution. However, the rebuilt ceiling --with extra mass inside the cavity against the subfloor, plus mass-loaded vinyl, insulation, metal channels for the new drywall, and soundproofed drywall instead of regular 5/8" gypsum -- was very very effective for everything but this one issue.

[@Dr.Stacker]

Very interesting video. Is it ok to skip on the resiliant chanel / decoupling method If my sole interest is to reduce only airborne noise and not impact noise? I have an integrated garage with a bedroom upstairs and would like to reduce noise leaving the garage to bedroom upstairs and outside the house. I'm not at all bothered by impact noises transgerring from upstairs joists to the garage/Workshop below. Would it be sufficient in this case skip on decoupling and instead fill between joists with Rockwool RW3, use 2 layers of acoustic plasterboard, leaving a 5mm edge around the walls to fill with acoustic sealant? Aside from that I know that the weakest link will be the garage door. Thanks in advance.

[@soundproofist]

So, unless you're running a lot of loud mechanical equipment in your garage for a prolonged time that would be disruptive to the rooms upstairs, I assume that the garage door probably goes up and down infrequently every day, and usually not at night when someone is trying to sleep. And you're right, a decoupled ceiling in the garage probably won't do much about the vibration from the door, because that noise travels through the whole building frame, not just the ceiling. I would probably do what you're thinking of doing. I assume your garage is simply a garage for storage and car, and not an ADU. No one is going to live in there or sleep at the garage level. Right? Rockwool insulation, two layers of drywall (and I recommend making one of them QuietRock), and acoustical sealant is probably sufficient in this case.

[@Dr.Stacker]

@@soundproofist I mainly use the garage for storing the car in the winter months and the odd DIY woodworking with some powertools. My main focus is to prevent the noise from disturbing neighbours as opposed to my family around the house who won't mind the DIY if its going to benefit us haha. I am looking at replacing the up and over door garage door with an insulated sectional one to address that issue. I was hoping that I didn't need to go as far as decoupling the cieling for my occasional DIY. P.S the house is detached but I'm just keen on keeping the neighbours and my noise at a happy level. Many Thanks

[@soundproofist]

@@Dr.Stacker You sound like a great neighbor! Thank you!

[@TauroChuck]

I get impact noises from down floor party hall from the impact noises of decorator arrangements.As their items impact the floor the noise travels upwards to my bedroom. What can be done in my bedroom and in party hall? Ive asked the building association to install 3mm vinyl sheets on flooring. Can I do something in my bedroom too.

[@soundproofist]

Many people don't understand that noise travels in more than one direction and that impact noise can come from downstairs to upstairs. Are you saying that the party hall is directly beneath your bedroom? If so, that's terrible, and your building association needs to fix the problem. Because if it's not a single apartment owner downstairs, but the whole building association, you might have more leverage. Can you tell me more about your building, and the flooring? For example, is it a wood frame with wooden floors? What year was it built? What efforts have been done so far mitigate the impact noise? Would the vinyl sheets be installed on top of the existing floor, or beneath it (against the floor joists)? Are you renting the apartment, or do you own it? Of course I always say that the best way to fix the problem is at its source. The building needs to modify the flooring so that impact doesn't transfer from the floor into the building frame. This could be decoupling the floor from the joists, or installing flooring like what they use in a fitness center, where people exercise or drop weights onto the floor. Try this first, because trying to decouple your flooring and the walls in your apartment would be very expensive for you and possibly less effective.

[@TauroChuck]

@@soundproofist The building is about 5 years old, concrete one 14 floors. Ground floor is party floor about 18 feet high.above that is my apartment. I am the owner. The floors are vitrified tiled floors. The party hall is part of gym ,dance/yoga room and TT game room.But other parts have 2mm vinyl sheeting. Party hall which is directly beneath me has only vitified tile floor. So all impact noises can be heard like dragging of metallic tables, items falling on ground when decorators arrange for parties and high vibrations from music. They use a 100W speaker. To mitigate I have asked association to put vinyl flooring and to use a 40W one as only Birthday partys happen. I am planning to get one of my bedrooms noise proofed.The expert said he will work on the whole room including decouple the bedroom ceiling , thats for the top floor noises. What best can be done to my bedroom floor? And what best can be done for the party hall? Rite now I can think of only vinyl flooring sheets or tiles.

[@soundproofist]

@@TauroChuck Those tiles on the party hall floor are definitely a problem. Tiles amplify noise and they don't dampen impact noise at all. Do you know what's underneath the tile? Concrete, I assume? When you say that you want to put a sheet of vinyl on the floor, what kind of vinyl? I assume that you would remove the tiles first. They're like microphones. Any hard surface can transfer impact noise, but tile is worse than wood. I assume the parties have a lot of dancing. I've seen examples of high-impact areas that install a "sprung" subfloor for situations like a fitness center. It's supposed to increase acoustic isolation. Notice the underside of these modular pieces of wood in this short "Freedom Step" video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pajSZoKvm96Viqs The modular pieces have spring-like foam in parts of the underside. However, this video is short and lacks details. And it made me nervous when I saw them add some extra layers of wood on top of the modular pieces without using acoustic underlayments (such as rubber or closed-cell foam) between the layers of wood. And I also saw a section of the top layer of wood touch the wall instead of leaving a small gap. This would transfer noise to the wall. I can look for other examples. As for your bedroom, IF you have a wood floor and wood joists, I would recommend removing the existing wood subfloor, adding some acoustical treatments between the joists, then use something like "joist isolation clips" before you put the subfloor back in place (www.buyinsulationproductstore.com/floating-floor-rubber-joist-isolation-clip/) because you're trying to prevent the transfer of vibration and low frequencies, so you want to reduce the contact between your subfloor and the joists. However, your building materials might be different. If you have a contractor, I would ask for suggestions of how to isolate your floor if the dance hall does not get soundproofed in a satisfactory way by your HOA.

[@TauroChuck]

Thank you for your inputs. My floor is vitrified tile floor.

[@soundproofist]

@@TauroChuck My experience with floor-impact noise coming from downstairs is based on a wood-framed building that's made with wood joists and floors. I can say from experience that all the upstairs neighbors in my building continue to hear impact noise from the floors in the downstairs apartments even after the downstairs ceilings got soundproofed, and with some insulation or soundproofing on the walls. And these apartments were modified or soundproofed at different times by different people, in slightly different ways. But in all cases, the upstairs and downstairs floors are not decoupled from the framing. The downstairs apartments updated the flooring, either by adding another layer of hardwood on top of the existing floor (with cork in-between), or by removing the original hardwood planks completely and then adding new flooring with a layer of what appeared to be tar paper, the kind that's used in roofing materials (not recommended, it's not sound absorbent). The subfloors in the downstairs units are directly nailed to the wooden floor joists. The new flooring, with or without padding or proper dampening, was added on top of the subfloor. My observation is that even with the decoupled ceilings in the downstairs units, the impact noise on the floor goes through the building frame, not floating up through the ceiling. It travels upwards from the floor joists to the inside of the walls and then into the floor joists in the upstairs units. Therefore, the impact noise is isolated (you don't hear airborne noise) and the impact noise sounds like it's closer than it really is, almost as if the impact was happening against the underside of the upstairs floor. To remedy this, the upstairs units would have to remove the flooring and decouple their subfloors from the floor joists, an expensive undertaking. In the case of a concrete floor, I think further research is needed because the solution will be different than it is with wood. First I would try to fix the impact noise downstairs and see what you still hear upstairs.

[@RockerBug17]

I doubt the people upstairs are complaining about impact noise as much as the people below.

[@soundproofist]

It really depends on what kind of building you live in, how it was constructed. I've never been aware of my downstairs neighbors in previous apartments, but my current building is hammered together like a barn, with no dampening. If you've ever heard the sound of someone clomping up a flight of wooden stairs, you know that impact noise can go up as well as down. You'd be surprised how many people have contacted me about downstairs neighbor noise!

[@aggelosalexandrou7475]

Hello how i can soundproof e ceiling?i can hear everything upstairs neigbours do when they walk or do something else

[@soundproofist]

Are you a renter or an owner? If you're a renter, possibly your only option is to try to get your neighbors to put down carpets with carpet pads or talk to your landlord. If you're an owner, you might be able to "soundproof" your ceiling, but it's expensive to do.

[@aggelosalexandrou7475]

Owner and how?

[@soundproofist]

@@aggelosalexandrou7475 The solutions are likely to be expensive and (temporarily) disruptive. One of the least-expensive things to do is to blow cellulose insulation into the ceiling cavity without actually having to remove the ceiling (you just cut small holes into it and then put them back again). HOWEVER, this will only dampen some types of airborne noise. It won't eliminate bass, deep voices, or impact noise like feet. It will mute peoples' conversation that echoes through the ceiling. The more-expensive solution is to decouple the ceiling (using resilient channels) so that the drywall does not touch the ceiling joists. And inside the ceiling, after you remove the old drywall, put soundproofing materials inside the empty cavity before you close it up again. This requires demolition, and it will cost more money, but it will reduce a lot of the impact noise and the bass noise. The bad news is that if you hire a professional to do this, it might cost about $20,000. This is why some people try to learn how to do this from materials available online and by watching some KZbin videos that demonstrate each step.

[@aggelosalexandrou7475]

Hey can you explain me please what d you mean decouple ceiling?

[@soundproofist]

@@aggelosalexandrou7475 "Decoupling" means that the material your ceiling is made from (plaster board, or whatever) doesn't directly touch the structure behind it. Because, as Paul Simon once sang, "One man's ceiling is another man's floor." The same ceiling joists that you see when you remove your ceiling are the same joists that touch your upstair's neighbor's floor. So vibration and noise is transferred from these joists and by the building frame. You don't see these structural parts behind the walls and ceilings of your apartment unless you open them up and remove the plasterboard. So when you "decouple" your ceiling, it means that you don't attach the new ceiling materials directly to the ceiling joists. Instead, you hang the new ceiling from some metal rails (called "resilient channel") perpendicular to the structure. There are many videos on how to do this. Here's one that I think is pretty clear: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4rci2ywpNOZmsk

[@MrEdmie]

If you build a drop ceiling and sacrifice room height, probably your upstairs neighbours aren't cooperating so screw them and let your kids do flanking impact noise.

[@howardskeivys4184]

I live on the ground floor of a new build apartment block. I have no neighbours other than the apartment above me. My apartment has solid concrete flooring built on a ‘block and beam’ structure. My concrete flooring is topped with wooden flooring. My walls are plasterboard. My ceilings are solid concrete. I’m a music lover, but have respect for my neighbour. I never play my music much above 85db and never play it late at night. My substantial floor standing speakers are decoupled from the floor, using isolation podiums. As a matter of interest and experiment, I once turned my music up to around 100db. Stood in the corridor of the apartment immediately above me and couldn’t hear a thing. Do I ever hear any noise from my neighbour above me? Being ground floor, I don’t have a balcony. Being 1st floor, the neighbour above me, does. I do hear when he opens or closes the heavy sliding doors to his balcony. I do hear it when he drags furniture across his hard floor, if it is furniture he’s dragging across the floor. The apartment block is gas free, so all electric. Economy 7! I do hear his washing machine when it reaches 1800 spin speed in the early hours of the morning. I occasionally hear his music, on a summer’s evening, when he comes home from the pub, turns it up loud and sits out on his balcony with the doors wide open. Now noise is weird. 200 yards away, we have a huge church. On a Sunday morning we can clearly hear the church bells. Yet, they can’t hear my music. The church looks out onto a dual carriageway, busy with heavy traffic. When I’m out walking the dog past that church, often the noise from the traffic will drown out those church bells. Yet, whilst I will easily hear those church bells from my apartment, I never hear that traffic. Explanations welcome.

[@soundproofist]

Concrete is pretty good at blocking airborne noise and conversation noise, possibly music (if the speakers are decoupled as you mentioned, and windows are closed). It's not so good with blocking impact noise (or vibration) without decoupling or serious absorption/softening between the wood flooring and the concrete below. So that's why you hear chairs scraping, washing machine rotations, doors sliding, etc. from upstairs. It's interesting that you don't hear the traffic (since you're on the ground floor) but you do hear the church bells (which are probably very loud, although further away). Have you ever run any decibel measurements on the traffic noise and the church bells? Preferably dBC measurements with a frequency reading, as well. In addition to frequency and decibels, it could also be related to the street from your apartment, anything nearby that might diffuse the traffic noise, and how good your windows might be.

[@howardskeivys4184]

@@soundproofist 👍

[@invisableobserver]

Having all aircraft banned & all pilots executed would solve much of noise pollution. I don't believe people should live in adjoined homes though many are forced to due to the economy & overpopulation.

[@chrisw7347]

What's your solution to global warming? Just destroy the entire biosphere of earth -- warming solved xD

[@invisableobserver]

@@chrisw7347 global warming is a big lie, don't be so gullible

[@DatBoi-ef1jo]

If buildings were constructed to reasonable standards that were considerate of things like noise, it wouldn't be an issue to have adjoined homes. As it is, living in a downstairs maisonette is... not restful