My street gets more and more busy, and I’m at the end of my rope with the noise. I don’t want to lay out cash for new windows, and I suspect that the walls themselves are too thin and not well insulated. (No point in replacing windows if most of the sound is coming through the wall anyway.)
I’m prepared to hang soundproofing curtains inside along the whole length of the street-facing walls, floor to ceiling, to hell with blocking the light. How do I shop for these, how do I know what’s good? The price points are all over the place. I’m willing to spend up to a couple thousand dollars, but don’t necessarily think more $$$ = better.
Anyone have any experience with this? What’s a good place to start?
I haven’t used any soundproofing curtains, so I can’t speak to those specifically, but in a prior apartment, I had similar issues with interstate noise. Since it was an apartment, I had limited options in how to deal with it. The things I tried that seemed to improve things a bit -
Hung some old quilts up against the interstate facing walls. The little bit of insulation seemed to drop the noise a bit, not a huge amount, but since I had the quilts anyway, was done for the low low cost of a few nails and hooks. It seemed that the thickness and density of the quilt was a better determiner of effectiveness than the materials.
Hung curtains (previously had blinds) over the windows - this was actually the least effective, to the point where I couldn’t even be 100% certain it made a difference. Possibly because they were far enough back from the windows that it didn’t have much muffling effect. It was helpful in further reducing the light that came in, which did help with sleeping more deeply and being better able to ignore the noise at least.
Fan (possibly white noise generator?) - this worked surprisingly well. Having a louder and more regular noise from the fan generally seemed to overwhelm the more irregular noises from the nearby interstate. It did mean having the fan on even during the winter, but hey, it was New Mexico and having the fan on was not a big loss even during the winter, and I sleep a bit better when it’s ever so slightly cold. I suspect a white noise generator (ocean wave simulator or the like) would probably serve a similar purpose as long as it was fairly regular and not distracting in it’s own rights. I have a skill on my bedside echo dot that does a decent job for the low low price of free.
Honestly though, these things helped, especially with sleep which was my biggest issue, but if the traffic keeps increasing, the only option long term may be to move. My old apartment was near the junction of I-25 and I-40 in central Albuquerque - it was -never- going to be really quiet without major soundwalls on the interstate and a lot of insulation.
As a separate suggestion, an option I used effectively during the recent 4th of July holiday when people were going crazy with fireworks is a bluetooth enabled sleep mask. Finding one that you’re comfortable with may in and of itself be a problem, but being able to block light and some sound out, while playing quiet instrumental music may make a difference, and since you can get one for sub $30, it may be the easiest quick fix.
Any chance you’d consider moving? I’m serious. Something like that would drive me insane within about a month, and no curtains are going to eliminate 100% of the noise. Life is too short to have a noise every day that will drive you crazy.
Heavy, double-layered curtains will help somewhat. But get really heavy ones.
We live in a duet home, and noisy neighbors moved in next door. We laid some new drywall over the existing drywall between the houses. It was a specialty drywall - it has a sheet of steel sandwiched between the normal drywall materials. We lost an inch or two of room, but it was worth it. It cut the noise considerably, but not completely. And boy, those drywall sheets were heavy.
Some great ideas here! At nighttime, it’s very quiet, so sleep is fortunately not an issue. Just the roar of motorcycles, junk cars, monster trucks, etc. at random intervals is emotionally disturbing as well as annoying. Any dampening of those noises will be an improvement; I don’t require silence. Unfortunately moving is out of the question.
What works most for me is constant white noise. I have slept on top of a 15(?)-ton air handler in a closed room many times; the db level was roughly 80-85 and it was possible to get a good, sound uninterrupted sleep. Even the weighted, fireproof steel doors banging shut wouldn’t wake me.
Pity the poor ghost of Sarah Winchester. I’m sure her quirky mansion was well out in the peaceful countryside when it was built.
Now it is smack in the middle of a heavily developed area of San Jose, with a huge multi-multiplex cinema in front w/ huge parking lots; major thoroughfare (named after her!) on the side, and Interstate 280 in her backyard!
This. Wife and I sleep with a sound machine under the bed. There’s a bunch out there, pretty much anything to suit your needs and price range. This one lets you select from a wide variety of sounds and includes an “adaptive feature” that ramps up the volume when it hears louder ambient noises (to help mask those transient noises with louder white noise):
Been around for a long time, I first saw one used to insure privacy in a therapist’s office. I felt soothed by the sound there and got one for my bedroom in a new house when street noises reared their ugly heads. Works like a charm.
There are also white noise, brown noise, pink noise, etc available as apps on smart phones. Very customizable. I use a pink noise on my phone when I travel rather than packing my plug-in sound machine.
I had trouble with loud music from a nearby hookah bar. I hung heavy, double, “sound proof” curtains over my bedroom windows. They did a great job with high and mid frequency sound. They are less effective against the low frequency, booming bass. So they might help with your street noise.
For the nights when the bass is really loud, I too have turned to a sound machine. I like the fan sound better than the white noise.
Sound deadening curtains need a few attributes.
Multi layer is good. Usually three.
Velvet is good. Velvet has huge surface area of fibres, and this surface area provides frictional dampening of air motion, so can reduce sound in some frequency bands.
A heavy damped layer. Usually a heavy rubberised blackout material. This will absorb some of the lower frequency energy.
Fit is important. Gaps can have an unexpectedly bad effect on the success.
Even small gaps in the window sealing can make a huge difference. Investing in self adhesive sealing strip to ensure the windows are near airtight when closed may really help.
Also, a huge amount of the sound we hear isn’t direct, but is reflected in our living space. Other wall treatments can and will help as well. Rugs, soft furnishings, wall hangings, whatever, all can soak up some of the sound bouncing around in a room.
The noise comes from one side of the house, but up and down the street so it can be heard from the sides and the back (in the case of some dirtbikes and trucks, very jarringly indeed. Some of these vehicles are modified to make as much noise as possible.) I know I’m fooling myself imagining even 100% sound insulation on the street wall would block it all out; it’s coming from all around the house.
That being said, I do think the street walls are the weakest point through which the most noise penetrates, so while being mindful of sound absorption in all rooms, I want to focus my efforts on blocking noise through the one wall (just two rooms, both of them bedrooms).
Has anyone ever built or know about sound insulation in recording studios? Some studios are so quiet you wouldn’t hear a jet plane directly overhead (though, of course, they’re insulated on all 4 sides and ceiling.) There are acoustical foam panels used in this application, and I think I’ve heard of custom inserts being made out of a foam material that’s sprayed into window openings, after lining them with plastic. Afterwards when it dries, you can take the whole piece in and out of windows at will, like a big styrofoam plug.
Recording studios have two parts to their acoustic construction. One is sound insulation - to stop sound from outside coming in, the other is acoustic treatments to control the internal propagation of the sound they want to record. The various panels you see on the walls are for controlling the internal sound, not for controlling sound coming in from outside.
Construction of studios is pretty over the top. In order to isolate the sound they essentially construct a room within a room. This includes the floor. You need an air gap between the building walls, ceiling and floor, and the walls ceiling and floor of the studio. The inner room is usually sat on rubber mountings.
An interesting trick used to make a soundproof wall is constrained layer damping. Walls are made from normal plasterboard, but in two layers, and the layers are glued together with a special energy adsorbing glue. Green Glue. They have a lot of interesting information you might find valuable.
Seconded heartily. Both the psychiatrists I worked for used these – it’s almost magical how they can make other sounds vanish while the sound they make themselves is almost unnoticeable after a couple of minutes exposure to it.
Thank you for all this, good to know about acoustical foam.
I’ve been reading and watching videos about Green Glue, and I’m under the impression the main benefit is just creating airspace within two sheets of drywall, not the sound-dampening properties of the glue itself, which is only dribbled on like Pollack, not spread like peanut butter on bread. But I may have it all wrong.
For a few to several hundred dollars, I may try this window covering on the two windows in the problem wall, and see how far that gets me. I don’t think I’m prepared to alter the drywall or add another layer.
Apparently called “Mass loaded vinyl,” right? I wonder if I could get squares of that and staple it right onto the walls (for a removable treatment when selling), then hang a huge curtain over all to cover up that ugly vinyl as well as provide extra sound barrier.
Reading about high and low frequency noise got me thinking about what the worst and most disturbing part of the problem really is: it’s the very high-pitched screaming sound of those little crotch-rocket motorcycles. Unfortunately you can hear those for literally miles, so a large amount of that noise is coming through other walls of the house. Still, the very loudest part has got to be when they pass right by the wall I’m trying to treat.
The airspace is critical, but so is the dampening. To some extent they are synergistic.
The damping layer works best when it is very thin. It works because it is sheared by the two sheets of drywall moving relative to one another as they vibrate. The shear distance is very small, so in order to suck energy out of the shearing motion the constrained layer must be thin. Too thick and it will just wobble and do nothing useful.
Imagine two layers of drywall glued together. Now bend them a little. The sheet on the outside of the bend will pull on the glue line from the edges in whilst the sheet on the inside of the bend will push towards the edges. The glue will be sheared by these tiny differences and will dissipate the energy put into by this shear as heat, thus adsorbing the sound energy.
It is a bit counterintuitive. One would think more glue would do a better job, but it actually stops it working.
In addition to what Francis said, a particular feature of Green Glue is that it doesn’t harden - if it hardened it would just transmit the sound but because it remains soft it absorbs.
