HELP!!!! - Brand New UPVC Double Glazing - Noise Problems

Hi.

We have a house which is 20 years old and was built by bryant home. It had wooden windows with double glazing with an airgap of only about 6-10mm.

We have lived in the detached house 10 years now and Sound insulation was never a problem and only pain was condensation on inside of glass in winter (used a karcher window vac to clear windows in the morning) - mostly upstairs.

Replaced the windows with UPVC windows "Masco - Diamond Suite" and 4mm -20mm-4mm double glazing. Pilkington Optiwhite, Pilkington KS.

Had a terrible problem with noise and sound reverberation and it turns out the warm edge spacer bar called "intercept" was infact made of U shaped steel. Manufacturers "Techniglass" came out and agreed their was a problem every window was replaced with me making a contribution to upgrade glass and now have 6.4mm -18mm -4mm

Pilkington Laminate and Pilkington KS with Superspacer T Spacer (spacerbar).

This is an improvement, however i still hear a lot more road noise than i did with my old windows and its really annoying me. Mostly car noise which i didnt get before from roads near us, not in our street, like normal car acceleration etc, the sound just seems to travel through the house now. The windows have silicone sealant on outside and chaulk on inside but NO foam filling of cavity gap around frame... would that help?

The Diamond suite frame has 3 section inside and is it the frame lacking mass that is letting sound in?

I nearly went for triple glazing with 5 section frame, would this have been better?

Wish i could rip the windows out and go back to what i had. Will UPVC windows always be worse than wood?

The window frame also has q lon memory foam seals, whch sounded good, however when it rains, water sits at the bottom of the frame and you can see it pass by the seal slowly into the frame to drain off. I can push a creditcard between the seal and the glass, so if it can pass water, it can no doubt pass noise also?

Lots of condensation on outside of glass this morning, so i assume its keeping the heat in ok.

Solar gain seems worse with the laminate and the house does not get as warm in direct sunlight, which i did not realise would be the case.

Want to replace windows again but dont know if i can improve things?

Thankyou for your help.

If there's a gap around the frames, that would certainly account for it.

uPVC windows generally are sh*te, yes. Aesthetically and structurally.

Cheers
Richard

I'll just address the noise problem a bit. Its a bit complex, and I don't have all the info I'd like, so I'm going to have to speculate a bit.

First, remember all sound is generated by a vibrating medium, and noise is just unwanted sound i.e. subjective.

The best attenuation of sound is density - pure and simple. The denser the material the better the attenuation (generally). So that cavity gap you mentioned could be a factor here. Foam isn't the best but, for sure, its better than air.

It could be that the new windows are not fitted as securely to the building as the old ones, meaning that the resonant vibration of traffic is causing the windows to vibrate and this is being transferred into the structure and so the whole house seems to resonate with 'noise'.

Then, acoustic secondary glazing has different properties to thermal secondary glazing. Essentially, for better acoustic attenuation you need either a vacuum (elementary school physics - sound doesn't travel through a vacuum) or lots of air space between the layers of glass - the wider the better. 200mm is optimal, but unlikely in normal construction.

Also, it is important that to avoid 'sympathetic resonance' both layers have different natural resonant frequencies, usually achieved by different thickness, but at 6.4mm and 4mm that seems to be covered now.

Your credit card water test suggests to me that its not been made to the best of standards generally.

HTH

Hi,
You should also bear in mind that some modern uPVC windows also come with vents in them, so that there is still some ventilation into the room while the windows are fully shut. Not sure if you have them on your ones.


We replaced some very old wooden framed windows which were meant to be double glazed (both panes and gap was 5mm in total by my guess) with some nice thick uPVC ones. While it definitely helps with thermal insulation I've noticed I can hear a faint din of road traffic if I am right by the window, and it's because of the vents the sound gets in.