I have a friend who just had some “white trash” (her words not mine) neighbors move in next door to her (she lives in an apartment). Apparently they are quite loud yelling at each other all the time and also have a baby crying seemingly non-stop.
To some extent she can complain to management…especially if they decide to yell in the wee hours fo the morning. However, I don’t think you can complain about a baby crying (or more accurately expect management to do anything about that).
So, apart from blasting a stereo yourself or wearing noise canceling headphones all over the place does anyone have some ideas on how to minimize noise from a neighbors place? Something short of tearing down the walls and replacing them with something more sound absorbant (not an option anyway because they aren’t her walls to modify)? Personally I can’t think of anything but a figured if anyway had a clever solution for this it could be found here.
(NOTE: Talking to the neighbors has already been tried and failed and moving isn’t an option for her just now.)
Wall hangings. You know, like in Hamlet. An arras to hide behind. Well, not that far away from the wall, but that’s the idea. Something an inch or two from the wall to create a little dead air space. They sell quilt hangers which work nicely, but you can do just as well with a piece of 2x2 from the lumber yard if you aren’t persnickety about what it looks like.
I bought some of those sound-dampening ceiling tiles and put them on the walls. Just a couple of small nails is all that’s required to hang them. It is not perfect, but it seems to reduce the noise a bit. It’ll cost $100 or so to cover a wall. Maybe that and KneadtoKnow’s wall hangings will help.
I can certainly sympathise with your friend after 12 years of apartment living. There comes a time when you get tired of always having to complain or call the cops everytime a new tenant must be educated in manners. Spending a few bucks seems well worth it to be able to ignore the problem.
Well, I have no idea if it actually worked, but a friend did this (I witnessed it firsthand, when we lived in separate buildings of identical apartments.) She was bugged by noise and also wanted to minimize any sound she might make with stereo/tv/phone/etc.
She bought a big (maybe 3 ft by 5 ft) piece of foam (circa 2 inch thickness.) She stapled it to fairly stiff and thick paperboard (the kind of thing an art student would use.) She covered it with pretty fabric and hung it in the living room. Voila, giant “sound baffle/wall hanging.”
Cheap. Easy. Effective? It seemed a tad quieter.
Then again, I lived in loud apartments for 5 years, and the only truly effective solution seemed to be calling the cops when it was truly justified (whenever you think yelling is more than yelling.)
My fuzzy pink bathrobe once stopped a 7 a.m blaring stereo (Me : “Turn off that stereo!” Him : “Yes, m’am, whatever you say!”) I guess I was too scary looking to argue with.
I’m also curious about this. I am the proud father of a pair of newborn twins, and my wife and I live in a one bedroom apartment. I’d like to avoid pissing anyone off, but the babies do cry in the middle of the night, and they are only going to get louder. My place is carpet, and I know that helps. But then again, all floors share a common heating duct, so that doesn’t.
Any ideas would be welcome, although from the above it seems that perhaps there is not much you can do.
I think any true sound proofing is likely to be more expensive than moving. Things that I have heard (no pun intended) of being used in the past include using a double walls 12 - 14" apart with compacted sand in between. Other options include doubled drywall with some kind of damping material sandwiched inbetween. I think she will just have to suck it up.
See? This is the BEST fix right here! A person who is cognizant of the noise they may be creating and has the desire and good neighborliness to try and mitigate the noise that is made.
Living in an apartment it is anavoidable to stay 100% silent for your neighbors. If people don’t like it they shouldn’t live in apartments. Of course, some people seem to have no concern for their neighbors and are excessive in the noise they make. Add to that cheap construction that made the walls paper-thin and you can have real problems.
Too bad her neighbors aren’t neighborly. It sucks to have to call the police and management all the time mostly doing nothing more than creating bad blood.
A former roommate of mine and I made our apartment into a recording studio for a time, and despite having people playing loud intstruments, we never had any complaints. Then again, we were intentionally doing this during the day when there were few people around.
The bulk of what we used to absorb sound were panels that consisted of a 2x2 frame that had fiberglass insulation in the middle and were covered with heavy black fabric on the outside. We also had studio foam panels, but those were considerably more expensive than our homebrew solution.
Of course, we weren’t going for looks. And it was actually kind of eerie in the living room when we weren’t recording, because there wasn’t any of the normal sound reflection that you’d normally expect.
Most effective soundproofing techniques need to be built into the structure. To quiet loud speech so that it sounds like a murmur on your friend’s side of the wall will probably require covering all common walls with homasote or filling the common walls with cellulose insulation. I doubt that the landlord will spring for either.
The cheapest thing your friend can do by far is call 911 and report a domestic disturbance whenever she hears one of her neighbors yell at the other. That, or depending on the jurisdiction, she may be able to file noise complaints against her landlord, if she is willing to finish her lease on bad terms with the management.
I thought I’d posted a response to a similar question a while back, but it’s been eaten.
At the time, I’d just seen a home improvement show which covered this. As far as I remember, things that worked were:
Filling in all the gaps (i.e. under the skirt). I can’t remember what with. I’d assume a dense cement filler rather than mastic, but that might be wrong.
Same sort of thing as Rhum says. If space is an issue, just the boards will do. Make sure that the seals don’t line up.
If it’s an upstaairs/downstairs thing (which I don’t think it is in your case), arrange to seal the gaps between their floorboards. If you’ve got money to spend, buy and lay acoustic flooring upstairs.
