Is your home noisy? Do you wish you didn’t hear things going on in other parts of your house? How about exterior noise? Do you hear sirens, motorcycles, cars, trucks, etc., even when your doors and windows are closed? Believe it or not, there’s quite a bit you can do with an existing home to make it quiet. You can make a new home ultra quiet with attention to many details.
I have a few stories to share that will convince you it’s possible to have a quiet house. About 40 years ago, my insurance agent hired me to install replacement windows in his stately brick home. His house was a stone’s throw from a very busy main artery that connected downtown Cincinnati to the posh neighborhood of Hyde Park. Suffice it to say, there was considerable road noise.
This solid-masonry home was built in the late 1890s. It had traditional up-down sash wood windows. The original windows had no weatherstripping. Some years later, crude brass weatherstripping was added to cut down on cold winter drafts.
The homeowner wanted the new windows to match the existing ones to preserve the architectural integrity of the house. Marvin Windows offered a wonderful product at the time, where they’d make new sashes to the exact size of the existing ones, and they’d supply new side jamb liners that nested on the sides of the existing window opening once the old sashes were removed. You didn’t have to touch the interior or exterior woodwork.
When I arrived at his house the morning after we had installed many of the windows on the first floor, he said: “Tim, you’re amazing! The windows look great, but I wasn’t prepared for how they’ve stopped all the road noise. It’s like a mausoleum inside now. I didn’t think we could ever stop all the noise from the traffic!”
Sound needs air to make it from the source of the sound to your ears. If you shot a gun in a vacuum, you’d not hear a thing. The new windows I installed blocked just about all air pathways between the outside and the inside of his home. His solid masonry walls, by default, were blocking any and all air from the outside from getting inside.
I used to do a two-hour live radio show. The sound engineer taught me one day how he made the radio studios soundproof. Once again, it all starts with air. The actual studio was much like a room within a room. If you took the radio studio and put it in a huge swimming pool, it would float. No water would leak into the studio. Every seam, hole, etc. was sealed with a gasket or with a special acoustic caulk that stays pliable for decades.
The covering on the inside walls of the studio was a different thickness from that on the outside in the hallway. The large glass window looking into the studio was made with multiple panes of glass of different thicknesses. The glass was not parallel like the double-pane windows in your home. All of this detail is what it takes to prevent walls and windows from being first cousins to giant bass drums you hear in a marching band.
My son’s new home is just 500 feet from a very busy freeway in southern New Hampshire. When you’re outdoors, the road traffic noise is so loud during the day that you have to talk a little louder than normal. That mind-numbing noise disappears the moment you go inside the house and close the doors and windows.
The builder did an excellent job of sealing each and every air leak. The windows have fantastic weatherstripping just like the Marvin windows I installed all those years ago. Other than that, the wall construction is no different than your home. My son’s house has vinyl siding attached to oriented strand board. The walls are framed with 2x6s, filled with fiberglass insulation, and the interior is just 1/2-inch drywall. It’s proof positive that stopping air leaks is the first step to stopping exterior noise from making it indoors.
You can limit interior noise transmission from one room to the next by paying attention to air leaks. The typical interior door is like a colander. Sound passes right around the edges of the door. Install inexpensive felt or foam weatherstripping on the door stop on the sides and top of the door jamb. Install a tight threshold or door sweep to stop air from sneaking under the door.
Remove the electrical outlet and switch cover plates, and no doubt there will be a gap between the electrical box and the drywall. Caulk that gap and then install a foam gasket under the cover plate.
Air is probably leaking under the bottom plate of the walls. You may be able to seal this by caulking under baseboards. In the worst cases, you can minimize the drum effect by adding an additional layer of drywall on one side of a wall. Sympathetic sound transmission happens when the wall covering on each side of the wall is the same thickness and same material.
Carpets, area rugs, upholstered furniture, and fabric wall decorations go a long way to absorbing sound in rooms. If all else fails, purchase inexpensive silicone earplugs. I use them every night to sleep like a baby!
