Help choosing sound insulation batts
sarayale
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
I am building a new home for myself and was wondering if anyone could recommend what brand or specific product of sound insulation batts is best for sound insulation of interior walls. The house is large and we want to insulate all interior walls, so the most cost effective product that can do the job well is what I am looking for. Thanks for any help. I am aware of Roxul Safe n Sound and Johns Manville, Owens Corning products etc. but was wondering if they are all the same or if any one does a better job at blocking noise.
Replies
If sound insulation is important (it's huge for me), then you might want to look at an layer of 5/8" drywall sanwiching a spread of Green Glue.
Other important details:
Return air registers in every room and a door that fits tight to the floor. I have weather stripping in addition to the 1 3/4" solid core door on each bedroom.
Doors to cut off sound from predictable noisemakers, like livingroom, dining room etc. Doors at the hallway that lead to bedrooms are great - it also signals that what lies beyong is a quite area.
Make sure the return air registers of adjacent rooms are not too close to each other.
Ideally, You would have a home run fro every register... or they at least wouldn't be linked near the rooms.
I would like to know about the batts too
There are some good tips here on sound/noise reduction but is there a quality difference between the different brands of batts (i.e. in your opinion, is one better than the other)?
Fiber insulation
doesn't do much for soundproofing. If that's all I had to use, I'd probably go with dense-packed cellulose.
What you really want are (a) more mass, and (b) mechanical de-coupling of the different areas. Trying to make adjacent rooms soundproof from each other is not easy when they are built on a continuous wood floor frame.
That Ted White guy was pretty stoked on just regular fiberglass insulation - nothing special - in addition to the Green Glue.
RE: Help choosing sound insulation batts
I just bought a house. 2 rooms next to each other are not that quiet. I put drywall, sheet rock, in the wall, in each room. That made a difference. I did not have to take down the walls of the foreclosure, the previous owners did a good job of destroying the walls. My floor is poured slab, so there's not a problem of vibrations from the floor.
Sara
You're getting answers, come on back.