How to Soundproof a Ceiling

Best Soundproofing Treatment For A Concrete Ceiling

The video below shows you the best and most cost efficient way to reduce impact noise (footsteps) and airborne noise (voices, music, TV...) through a concrete ceiling in an apartment.

- Buildings made of concrete floors, ceilings and hard walls are very hard to sound proof because noises vibrate through the whole structure of the building; for example, if someone is drilling two apartments away you'd hear it very clearly in your apartment.
This problem could be easily assessed during construction but in many countries the sound transmission is not taken much into consideration making it very difficult to solve it after.


- If the floors are covered with carpets you'd have two benefits, one is a big footsteps noise reduction but also a significant airborne noise reduction by eliminating "echo"because the carpet works as a sound absorber. It does not only make a difference for people below but also for people next door.
For example you may not hear your neighbour TV next door but as soon as he remove his carpet and replace it by tiles or timber floor, he'll create a lot of echo in his room resulting of doubling the noise,
echo create an unintelligible sound and we tend to increase the volume to hear better and that 

exacerbates the problem even more, making the walls vibrating and suddenly you can hear clearly the TV from your neighbours.

- It is always better to fix the problem where the noise is created, in this case the best solution would have to install the floor boards above on a floating floor but the neighbours above are not very often willing to do that, therefore the only solution is to treat the ceiling below and that is less efficient because you have to stop a noise that has been already created and get transmitted not only through the ceiling but through the walls below as well. By treating the ceiling you'll solve part of the problem, if you want complete peace you'd need also to treat the walls.

In other words, you can't stop noise transmission in this type of buildings unless you build a room inside the room. An acoustic ceiling will only reduce the noise coming from the ceiling, the walls will still transmit some noise if there are not treated as well but it is still a good compromise.

- For ceilings made of timber joists and timber floors, you can use a similar system and it will work even better, one of the reasons is that you can fill the ceiling cavity between the joists with a thick layer of high density acoustic absorbers, the other reason is the timber joists will transmit less footsteps vibrations through the walls than the concrete slabs.

- More sound proofing stories will come regularly and I would love to receive your feedback in order to improve the content and the quality of my blog.

               For more information you can visit our webpage : www.soundspace3.com

                                        or email me: philippe@soundspace3.com


You can also call Philippe on 04 5151 8808 from Australia or 614 5151 8808 from overseas