Sound Insulate Party Wall - to stop noise

[gandhim]

Hi,

I want to sound insulate the party wall between me and my neighbour because we can hear muffled voices and their movement of furniture, and their footsteps when we are downstairs and they are upstairs.

The party wall is made of brick, plastered smooth and clean.
Are 12.5mm plasterboards going to block much sound?
What can I do to block their footsteps noise from coming through to my house?

Please help with suggestions and the costs because I need some peace and quiet at home after an awful day at work!

Many thanks,

MG

 

[maltaron]

Plasterboard will not help much. Soundproofing wadding and a new partition wall is about the only way. Stuffing wadding between the joists may help a little with footsteps.

Alternatively, sell up and buy a detached house.

 

[joe-90]

Nothing simple will help.

 

[mointainwalker]

There may be a small improvement, but not significant.

Only simple ( but not necessarily easy ) thing that may help is looking for actual gaps in brickwork which would then need to be filled with plaster/mortar. These most likely around plug-sockets and certainly around the joists but need to take up floor to check that.

 

[Chit]

Whatever you do, you'll end up making your own rooms smaller as you'll have to insulate from your own side - you may want to try sttaching battens to the party wall with 2.4's, filling the void with sound deadening materials and then finishing off with plywood accross the front of the battens and sound deadening materials.

Once done, you'll have to plaster over the plywood and decorate to taste.

Have a look on google from sound deadening materials - lots of things will come up.

 

[jeds]

How far are you prepared to go? Joe is right - there are no simple answers. There's plenty of help here but we need to know what level of works, effort. cost you are prepared to go to first.