posted
Okay a large problem with my room/parents/house.
Basically at around half past ten every night I can barely whisper or use my computer at night because aparently certain relatives can hear me the floor above me, and my brother every once in a while yells at me when hes sleeping in the room outside my door.
Like its pretty frustrating that even talking in a normal tone of voice is apparently loud enough for my parents upstairs to hear it slightly and complain how it wakes up my dad. Seriously I can fall asleep in the middle of a war zone (I have proven this to an extent but thats a long story) is it really so hard to sleep with a tiny bit of background noise eery 5 minutes or so?
I do wear headphones but the games I play really makes typing to my friends inconvenient, so I need to find a way to sound proof my door as to not disturb my brother and my ceiling as to not disturb my parents.
So far Im thinking of collecting egg cartons and tacking them to my door and ceiling.
Any other possible house hold idea's?
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posted
I've got a friend who carpeted his bedroom walls in an attempt to make it into a sound recording studio. It did help quite a bit with echoes in the room.
You should consider replacing your bedroom door with a more solid one that would dampen sounds. It sounds like too much sound is escaping into the hallway. Make sure the door closes securely and that there are no large gaps in the frame. It may even be that the noise reaching the upstairs room is coming through the door and not the ceiling.
Also check if there are any ducts and vents that connect your room with the upstairs room. Closing the vents and covering them with padding should cut down on a lot of noise.
Egg cartons should do the trick, but they'll be hard to obtain in large quantities and they'll be more of a fire hazard that normal carpet or some types of foam pad.
Posts: 145 | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Umm... why egg cartons? I don't think they have a particularly high STC rating - in fact, I believe term "paper thin" could apply. There are all sorts of other ways of DIY soundproofing - carpets/curtains are a good place to start. The key is to think sound absorption, not sound diffraction (whick is all an egg carton would do - and only at limited frequencies, I imagine). Asking google will yield all sorts of wonderful results...
posted
Um, if your room isn't soundproof, you might want to turn down your speakers before clicking that link.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
I've been told by multiple sources that egg cartons work extremely well at dampening sound, my problem with a carpet though is that I lack said carpet me thinks, buuuut I do have lots of neighbours maybe one has a carpet.
The way it works with my room and the room above is that traditional to Canada we have "wood frame construction".
Basically I live in the basement, so there is absolutely no insulation between the basement ceiling, and the first floor (in the usual cheap Quebec way) so aside from a layer of wood, some jiprock, and the fake floor tiles nothing muffles the sound.
And I also belive that my basement walls have nothing between the jiprock and the conrete blocks as when I accidentily kicked it in nothing was on the other side afaict.
So the sound in the case of my parents room can travel pretty freely both ways...
so anything above a hushed voice or loud whisper can be heard.
Also its not a hall way, basically you go down the stairs into a large room, and at the back of it is a door which is the door to my room and on the opposite side of the room from my door is my borther bed some 10 feet or so away.
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posted
Blayne, it is indeed quite possible to be unable to sleep because of "normal" sound below you. It is even more possible that what seems "normal" to you is excessive to most people -- you probably wouldn't even be aware of it.
It's your parents' home, and they are perfectly within rights to limit noise at that time of night. For the same reason, you should ask them before attaching things to the ceiling, as if not done right, it can do damage that costs to repair.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
And please investigate fire safety aspects of soundproofing - homemade soundproofing can be a serious fire safety hazard.
Heck, professionally installed soundproofing can be a fire safety hazard.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
They occasionally complain about hearing mouse clicks or my chair moving, I am pretty sure there's a default level of tolerance thats not being followed.
Also my room is already a fire hazard s making it more of a fire hazard isn't making that much of a difference.
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quote:They occasionally complain about hearing mouse clicks or my chair moving, I am pretty sure there's a default level of tolerance thats not being followed.
There is no "default level of tolerance." There's the level of tolerance they are willing to extend to you as a person who chooses to live in their house.
Unless they're complaining about sounds when there are none being made, it's clear they are hearing your noises.
quote:Also my room is already a fire hazard s making it more of a fire hazard isn't making that much of a difference.
Highly combustible material that melts and drips on your head while on fire and creating toxic fumes that will cause you to pass out is probably an order of magnitude worse than whatever clutter is turning your room into a fire hazard.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
If I may speak frankly, it does suck to have to live in another person's house. I find sharing a home with my husband to be much more tolerable than living with my parents as an adult would be, but we still sometimes are crawling up each other's skin and in danger of poking each others' eyes out.
It's just hard. That is one of the big incentives for finding steady work and supporting yourself, although that is also hard (albeit for different reasons).
And I was so sure that being an adult would be easier! Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
Sometimes I wish they would just take the choices away. I never go grocery shopping 'cause there's just too much to choose from. I need to hire a service that will decide what I eat every night and make it for me. I need to hire a mom. Now I just have tuna mac and beer every night. Hello Gut, how ya doin'?
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Zeugma: Man, I think being an adult rocks! ... I've never gotten tired of the infinite number of choices I have as a wage-earning, car-owning, own-house-having adult, and you couldn't pay me enough to be 15 again.
*nods
I would never go back, either. It is just harder than I expected it would be from the perspective of a 12-yr-old, albeit worthwhile nonetheless.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
*wishes had a job*
Been searching the entire summer and only 1 little job shoveling gravel and that sucked like a vacuum.
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quote:It is just harder than I expected it would be from the perspective of a 12-yr-old, albeit worthwhile nonetheless.
That's so true, but the second part seems to dominate for me, judging by how little (read, "not at all") I am enjoying having a place to myself.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Maybe it would help if you developed a penchant for eating food right out of the pot or watching TV in the middle of the night.
Already done that - it's just not satisfying. No Captain Kangaroo and my deck of cards has all 52 in it, though, so there's hope.
Actually, there's a lot of hope - my last day at the firm is Friday, and we're off to St. Michaels on the Chesapeake Bay for 6 days.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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It will get better. It always gets better. (Then it gets worse again for awhile, but then it does get better again, always.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Zeugma: I've never gotten tired of the infinite number of choices I have as a wage-earning, car-owning, own-house-having adult, and you couldn't pay me enough to be 15 again.
I would be 15 again for a few million dollars. I mean, sure it would suck living through those next couple of years again, but I'd have prudently invested the payment so that as soon as I am once more an adult, I can retire.
It would be more difficult, however, to pay me enough to remain 15 indefinately.
posted
Well, to soundproof, or sound reduce, a room, you've got to get rid of vibration and air leaks.
Fill the ceiling and walls with insulation. In that case you are effectively wrapping the room in a thick blanket, and that should muffle the sound.
Next, consider air leaks. If you have forced air heat, it is possible that the heat register/vent that feeds your room also feeds the room above. That is a huge air leak. That is a very large echoing path for sound to travel between rooms.
If this is true, it is a difficult problem to solve because you can't really change the heating system for your whole house. However, you could get an alternative source of heat, like a space heater (expensive to run), and block of the heat register.
Also, note when you insulate everything, you will also be insulating, and therefore muffling, any vibration that might be transferred directly into the heat ducts (That's ducts rather than vents).
Though closing off the heat vent and using a space heater, doesn't solve your air conditioning problems.
Next is the door. Likely, as is found in most houses, this is a hollow core door. Meaning, it is a 2" x 2" fame with a couple of thin sheets of ply wood glued to the front and back; so, hollow. Not good. You need some type of solid core door. Simply solid core doors can still be relatively cheap.
Then there are the air leaks around the door, especially under the bottom if there is a noticable gap. Close up those gaps with a threshold and foam strips to make sure the door seals tight, and you have a good start.
As to egg cartons, if they are paper rather than plastic, then they have some but a limit ability to absorb sound. Primarily, they take a single large air wave front and break it up into smaller spread out air waves. It is good for general acoustics, but not necessarily good for sound proofing.
There are special types of wallboard that are very dense, that are specifically made for stopping sound. But to redo the room in that would be expensive.
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