A semi-detached home renovation which disturbed the peace
Like so many others in the UK, Katy lives in a three-bedroom semi-detached home, next door to a lovely family. She had such a great relationship with them that when her neighbours built a new kitchen extension off the back of their house, Katy was happy to let them build right up to the boundary of the garden.
Of course, the building work was disruptive. It was very noisy, and scaffolding needed to be erected in Katy’s back garden. While Katy found the ordeal stressful, she knew how important this extension was for the family next door. So, she put up with all the noise, inconvenience, and mess, and looked forward to the peace that would return when the builders completed the work.
But sadly, that peaceful day was not to come. The builders put down their hammers and finished work. But Katy soon discovered a shocking amount of noise was still transferring from the family’s new kitchen extension into her large lounge-diner on the other side of the party wall.
Initially, Katy mentioned it to her neighbours a few times. But as time went on, she felt uncomfortable continuing to bring it up, especially as her neighbours claimed they couldn’t hear any noise coming from Katy and her family.
Katy didn’t want to ruin the good relationship she had with her neighbours, but the noise caused her both stress and anxiety. Every time she was in her much-loved lounge-diner, all she could hear was noise from her neighbours, such as the children running around and other impact noise. Completely overwhelmed by it, Katy shut the door on the lounge-diner and stopped using it. This meant that half of the downstairs space in her semi-detached home was now out of use.
How Noise from Neighbours Transferred into Katy’s Semi-detached Home
Of course, this was not a practical solution. But moving was not an option either. The age of the property meant that it had big rooms and a huge garden. Not only was an equivalent-sized detached property in the same area not financially viable, but it also just didn’t exist. Instead, Katy looked at having her own property renovation done. If she had noise insulation fitted, she could find peace in the semi-detached home she loved again.
Katy did her homework and got advice from numerous companies providing soundproofing materials. Each offered party wall soundproofing as a solution, advising her to only treat the alcoves either side of the two chimney stacks in her lounge-diner. However, Katy knew that the noise from her neighbours was loudest where the chimney stacks were. Yet, every company insisted that these were not a problem.
Unconvinced, Katy booked a free noise diagnosis call with Quietco. She then had a soundproofing consultation home visit with us. We discovered that noise was travelling through multiple routes in her semi-detached home, including the:
- Party wall
- Chimney stacks
- Window wall at the back of the house
- RSJ, which had been installed when the open plan lounge-diner was created
- Stud wall upstairs separating the front and back bedroom.
Katy was able to confirm this for herself by placing an ear on these flanking areas and hearing the neighbour’s noise travelling through them.
Finally, she had found a company that not only understood her noise problem but who could also fix it.
Dealing with the Noise from the Neighbours
To solve Katy’s noise problem, we used our four-step soundproofing method. We bricked up the holes in the suspended floor and installed Quietco’s suspended floor insulation system. We also installed our TPS80W package with a 175mm thick soundproofing system to the party wall and fire backs. This was ‘tucked down’ into the suspended floor too, ensuring noise insulation for both floor and wall. As the RSJ was resting on the party wall, we sound deadened and treated this as well.
We also treated the rear window wall in the lounge-diner with our 50mm thick TPS65W package. Finally, to complete our soundproofing solution, we treated the ceilings and soundproofed the upstairs stud wall that separated two of the bedrooms.
Quietco completed the entire renovation, which included all plumbing, electrical, plastering, carpentry, windowsills, carpet re-fitting and fire removals. While the cost of the renovation was over £20k, this was significantly less than it would have cost to move from her semi-detached home to a detached property.
Calm, quiet space restored
These works have resulted in over a 90% reduction in human-perceived noise from the neighbours. Katy and her family are now finally able to enjoy all the rooms in their semi-detached home, stress-free. They can also now have guests round without being disturbed or feeling embarrassed about the noise.
In Katy’s own words:
Exceptional service, outstanding quality of workmanship.
The installation team were informative , great communication, punctual, trustworthy and pleasure to have in the house.
Thank you for making a stressful situation disappear !!
Soundproofing to this standard allows you to feel settled and comfortable in your own home. It also works both ways, which means you can make as much noise as you like without the fear or worry of disturbing your neighbours.
Interested in soundproofing? To book your free noise diagnosis call, get in touch here.
