DIY Domestic Ceiling Soundproofing.

If you are suffering from noise problems travelling through from your ceiling above it would be wise to firstly try and do something to the upstairs floor before undertaking the installation of a false ceiling. The diagram above shows a basic example of how it looks when you uprate your ceiling without doing anything to the floor above and without adding anything into the cavity space first. If these points are addressed as well the performance would be greatly enhanced. (see diagram at bottom of page)

The best option for ceiling soundproofing is to make use of flexible resilient bars. It is preferable that the new ceiling is NOT physically attached to the existing structure or is certainly as isolted from it as possible. Ideally, remove the existing plasterboard (or add battens to the existing ceiling via our 5mm thick neoprene strips) and add acoustic mineral wool in the cavity space before fixing resilient bars to the joists (or battens). Even further improvements are obtainable by substituting the mineral wool for our high performance 2FT45 Quilt. Two additional layers of 12.5mm plasterboard (preferably thicker) should be attached to the resilient bars. The second layer of sheets should overlap the seams in the first layer for improved performance. The edges of the plasterboard must NOT touch the existing walls. This small gap should be filled with acoustic sealant. Additional performance can be obtained by fixing a layer of our acoustic membrane in-between the two sheets of plasterboard. This material greatly damps the plasterboard. This resilient channel system approach can add up to 5-8dB to the overall performance because the structureborne vibrations are reduced.

If there are restrictions on what you can do to uprate your ceiling the most minimal improvement can be to stick a layer of our acoustic membrane to the existing ceiling then screw ontop a further 19mm sheet of plasterboard plank up. This can give you around an 6dB increase in performance but will not make much improvement to impact noise only airborne noise. Adding 60Kg mineral wool slabs between the joists can give a further 3dB improvement. Using our 2FT45 Quilt in the joist cavity space can improve things even further by around 12dB. You need to know where the joists are so that you can get good fixings to hold the plasterboard up. You also need to make sure the perimeter and seams are well sealed. Doing the above can more than double the performance of the existing ceiling.

Higher Performance Floor/Ceiling Solution

PLEASE NOTE:

The results you will get when doing this will depend on workmanship, materials used, methods used but improvements can sometimes be limited by 'flanking noise'. This phenomenon is where a percentage of the noise may not only be transmitted directly through the wall but also via adjacent walls touching the separating floor and this can vary from one project to another. It often depends on the existing structure. For example if the floor is a concrete floor slabs built correctly into the wall then the floor acts like an added resistance to the sound trying to 'flank' through the wall but if the floor slab is not built in but butted to the wall and the wall leaf is continuous between houses there will be excessive flanking transmission and you would have to treat not only floor or ceiling but also the walls as well.

Another typical example of bad conversions is where the end joists run parallel to the party wall. Insulation may have even been installed in the past but the gap between the end joist and wall was left. This may have been because someone thought it wouldn't make much difference but it will ! In sitations like this, without taking things apart to investigate, there may be hidden problems which will again limit the improvements that would otherwise be achieved.