Secondary glazing for traffic noise issue

[Kaymo]

Hi all,
I have a bit of an issue with road noise from a busy A-road just outside the house. The house is fully double glazed so its fine when TV or music is on but at night its bad enough that a speeding car or motorbike will wake me up and I generally wake up every morning as the traffic starts at 6am ish whether I need to be up or not!

I am starting to try and find ways to fix this and I am thinking on adding secondary glazing and/or shutters. I believe that I need to get about 100mm distance from the current panes to reduce sound but I wont get that by just attaching standard secondary glazing from the outside so an idea I had was to seal acrylic panels into the stone window panels from the outside which would give me about 100mm gap but I am not sure if I will have problems with condensation on the outside panel which will obviously be sealed in and only accesable by ladder. I thought I could possibly drill some small holes in the panel for ventilation but I wondered would this defeat the purpose and let the sound through. Anyone have any advice or tried anything like this before?

Thanks

 

[Mw Roofline]

If the sealed units are 28mm then u can get a triple unit put in, check the window is sealed and shuts tight, if you have enough room to install a secondary glazed glass inside then do that. The acrylic will look shit.

Sound also comes from the eaves too btw

 

[Kaymo]

Thanks Mw, I was thinking with the acrylic outside and up high it would not be that noticable but I agree its not ideal. From everything I have read so far I am not convinced that triple glazing will make much of a difference as the suggestion seems to be that for noise its a large gap that is needed, but yes I do have space inside for secondary glazing.

Part of my problem is that I dont want to spend large amounts of money until I am sure where the noise is coming from and as you say, it could be partly from the eaves and perhaps other places, but it does seem like its worse in front of the window. I am wondering if I could cut some MDF to fit and temporarily block the window opening on the inside with that, if the noise is significantly reduced then the window is the main issue?? I cant really think of any other way to be sure as to how it is entering the room.

 

[Mw Roofline]

Yeah you could try that, otherwise i'll come over one of the nights with my mate daves cement trailer and lay you a speed hump!

 

[Kaymo]

Yeah you could try that, otherwise i'll come over one of the nights with my mate daves cement trailer and lay you a speed hump!

You are on! This is actually part of the problem, its officially a 30 limit outside but its a country road about 100m from the outside of the village and drivers are mostly doing 60+. Add the trucks from the quarry and the odd Ned racing his 125 and you get the picture.

I tried the MDF on the big window and sealed it as best I could with draught strips and it has made a small difference, or at least made it sound like more of the sound is coming from the side window. So I am going to do the same temp block of that window and see if it gets it down to reasonable levels and if it does I will look into secondary glazing.

Also planning to slide some insulation boards part way down the sloping roof as there is no insulation so hopefully this will help with any noise coming from the roof.

 

[big-all]

do you have a good covering off hedges and shrubs they would help absorb /deflect the noise i would have thought

 

[Kaymo]

Hi Big-all,
I have planted a row of Leylandii about 0.5m apart which should make for a fairly thick hedge but even with Leylandii I think it will be a few years before that will have much effect.