Do you live on a busy road and traffic noise is keeping you awake at night? Are you fed up of listening to your neighbours arguing? Maybe you’ve heard enough of the dubious house music making its way through your floors from the flat downstairs… With that in mind, let us give you a couple of recommendations of products to help soundproof your home.
We talk a lot about insulation, but aside from the energy savings and increased thermal comfort it can give you, an added benefit is acoustic protection. We thought we should tell you about two of the easiest, cheapest measures you can take to reduce noise pollution entering your home.
Ecoease
An alternative to double glazing, Ecoease secondary glazing is made to measure, lightweight, and takes minutes to fit. Clearly, it won’t reduce noise travelling through walls interior noise, but if road noise is your problem it could help.
The panels attach to magnets on your window, which means they can be removed without fuss on warm days. In the same way as double glazing, air is trapped in the gap between the secondary glazing and your window, which means some of the sound making its way through the external window pane dissipates when it bounces of the Ecoease panel, meaning less sound vibrates through into your home. In fact, Ecoease can reduce noise up to 55% vs. 4mm glass- that’s 13 decibels!
You can get hold of it here.
Rockwool
Another cost-effective choice is Rockwool. There are various products available, depending on where you would like to install it. It can be used in walls, lofts and floors. It insulates against sound as well as heat loss.
The open porous structure of stone wool means it is highly efficient against noise pollution. Here’s the science of how it soaks up airborne sound: as sound energy travels through fibres in the material, trapped air molecules move back and forth inside and dissipate sound energy as tiny amounts of heat.
It’s made from a sustainable, natural source – recycled diabase rock, which is replenished naturally within the earth. Because it’s made from rock, it is naturally fire resistant too.
The full range is available at EWI Store.
External wall insulation
External wall insulation involves fixing solid insulation to the outside walls of your property, which is then covered a layer of coloured render. The main reason people choose to install the measure is to keep their homes warmer and to lower their energy bills, as less heating escapes through the walls. However, it has the added benefit of having soundproofing qualities. The extent of this depends on which insulation material you opt to use, with a mineral wool system costing more but also blocking more noise from outside.
These measures can keep you warm, improve the safety of your home and reduce annoying noise entering from outside. Let us know how you get on!
Installing solid wall insulation
Interested in getting solid wall installation? We have scoured the country for the best tradespeople, so that we can make sure we only recommend those we really trust.
If you would like us to find you a local installer, just fill in the form below and we will be in touch shortly!
The flat I live in has no soundproof material and so every sound can be heard and so life here is a nightmare.
It’s like sharing one big horrible flat and you can’t escape from one another.
Clearly, the local council has a strange understanding of what “regeneration” means.
It’s so depressing.
Very insightful post. I had issues with noise at night, which was preventing me from sleeping. However, I recently had soundproof windows installed by a company called Hugo Carter. They have worked incredibly, I sleep like a baby every night now!