Sound Insulation Blog / Forum - A Place for all your sound insulation questions to get answered - please feel free to post!



Here are some of the sound insulation questions we have been asked and the sound insulation products we have suggested to solve the issue for our customers!



I have a noisy laundry room being designed into my appartment which sound insulation should I use? 

Laundry rooms are coverted to be one of the most noisy enviroments in a property.  I personally do not like them as it usually means I am taking on the mamouth task of doing the laundry! Well, the economy 7 is out of the window if you do not design and fit sound insulation material into a build, especially around the laundry room. An ultra silent washing machine runs at approximately 70dB, with a standard machine running upto 77dB. This noise without the use of sound insulation products will be enough to wake you up 2-3 rooms away with a standard plasterboard partition wall design. If you are looking for peaceful sleep and require the use of an office in the daytime, we recommend you fit sound insulation into the plasterboard walls or even onto brick walls to add mass to the situation.  Our mass loaded vinyl sound insulation is only 3mm thick (space is important in building design) so the sound insulation product will not reduce the building envelope noticably.  It offers a 27dB reduction Rw (weighted sound reduction index - BS EN ISO 717-1) and when fitted correctly can really reduce sound transmission through walls and floors.  There is a choice of either self adhesive sound insulation material (DeciLAM) or plain backed sound insulation (DeadenerVB5) offering you an option when fitting the sound insulation product. 

DeciLAM Sound Insulation 


DeadenerVB5 Sound Insulation





I am sick of hearing the exhaust whine in my car, can you solve this for me? 

The guide for car exhausts is that you should not fit one which exceeds approx. 85dB, however the exhaust aftermarket is saturated with very noisy exhaust systems.  If you own one it can be a great deal of fun, however the constant drone of performance exhausts can be tiresome and doesn't provide the occupants with the premium car effect, where the driving experience is subtle, however passers by can determine the car has been professionally modified.  Also prolonged exposure to over approx. 85dB can be harmful to hearing.  This is where sound insulation material can help, as a car is manufactured of usually a steel body, this leads to reverberation os the sound internally if the panels are not treated with panel dampening materials.  Ideally two or three sound insulation products can be used to offer the full sound insulation treatment.  Firstly, a high performance panel dampening sound insulation material could be fitted. This will add mass the the panels and if fitted 100% coverage with no gaps, this will provide a mass barrier effect, effectively reducing the material count from three to two.  We recommend the following sound insulation product for this application. 
Find more information okn ButylMAT here: 
www.butylmat.co.uk 
ButylMAT panel dampening sound insulation material



After covering the boot floor as below: 



After this treatment, you can fit an additional sound insulation product in the cavities of the rear wheel arches, for this we recommend:

3M Thinsulate



This sound insulation product will absorb the secondary airborne sound transmitting through the air and refine the vehicle further from rear open-ness (which many car manufacturers do not insulate completely against). 



I am designing a £1.5m motoryacht and the engine room is too loud, can you test and solve this issue, please?

Upon testing within the main lounge at full tilt on the solent in a £1.5m motor yacht (a very exciting sound insulation experience) we came up with a peak dB reading of 77-80db which was in excess of the owners expectations for noise.  We set a target of 66dB peak so you could still tell you were "motoring" as it were!  This was a very difficult target to meet.  We fitted a mass loaded vinyl sound insulation 5Kg in weight and 3mm thick to all the walls and top bulkhead of the engine room (as this was situated under the main lounge) and bonded 3m Thinsulate on top of this in areas to reduce airborne sound within the engine room itself.  
Find more information on boat insulation here: 
www.boatinsulation.co.uk 
Here are similar products to what was used on this build: 





You can also purchase this as a pre-set laminate sound insulation product here: 


 
I have recently purchased a terraced house and the road noise is incredible, can you recommend a sound insulation product to put behind plasterboard in my bay window area please? 

We recommended either DeadenerVB5 or DeciLAM for this sound insulation application as the customer wanted a simple cost effective sound insulation solution.  They settled upon using DeciLAM in the end due to its self adhesive characteristics and were very pleased with the results. 

Remember all of our products are manufactured in the UK 


 

Thanks for reading our sound insulation blog / forum. Please add your questions below and we can suggest a recommendation straight away.