Blocking up doorway

[wilfster]

I'm knocking a separate upstairs toilet and bathroom into one to make a bigger bathroom. This involves removing the existing toilet doorway. The existing wall is 2 inch cinder block plastered on both sides to give a finished thickness of 3 inches.

The issue is how to fill in the doorway. The obvious thing is stud partitioning, but I don't like this solution. Stud panelling is noisy and acts as an amplifier behind a shower unit. I've tried to clean up blocks used in the wall I've demolished to re-use them, but they've broken up. I can't find 50mm thick blocks anywhere, I guess they're not used any longer. The building is about 60 years old, former council house.

Any ideas how I could build a solid wall, or will it have to be a stud partition?

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

What's under the floor to support a masonry solution? You can get 50mm blocks but seeing as they'll be special order doubt you'll be able to buy just a couple, probably a pallet. Or cut down some normal blocks. A well built stud wall is pretty sound resistant IMO.

 

[wilfster]

What's under the floor to support a masonry solution?

The answer may make you smile - or wince. The upstairs masonry wall is built onto floorboards with no supporting wall beneath. The doorway I plan to block up runs along a joist. The wall I demolished ran at 90 degrees to the joists, so supported in places only by floorboards. Taking into account the 2 inch concrete blocks, cement plaster both sides and ceramic tiles on the bathroom side, I reckon the weight of wall over a six foot length of floor was about half a ton. There was no sign of cracking in either the wall or the ceiling below. It seems common practice for these 1950's council houses to have been built by boarding out the upstairs floors and ceilings, then putting in masonry walls to divide into rooms without any reference to supporting walls below!

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

" Stud panelling is noisy and acts as an amplifier" . use double thickness plasterboard and stuff the cavity with glass fibre.
Frank

 

[wilfster]

I've sorted it out now. In the end I got some lightweight aerated concrete blocks and cut them into 2" thick brickettes with an angle grinder. Took ages, but it enabled me to reinstate a masonry wall and make it much lighter than the original cinder blocks.