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I live in a 3 story house and on the ground floor part of the floor is an internal garage. Above this is my kitchen. I dont care about sound going into my house but I have my best mate living next door and his wife is fairly sensitive to noise and I'd like to not piss her off.
Is there anything I can do to massively quosh the noise levels of an angle grinder or my compressor running?
Compressor I figure building an insulated box around it and putting it on some thick rubber matting.
Angle grinder... less of an idea!
Any thoughts appreciated.
Does the noise travel between houses?
We are in a 3 storey town house too and the noise travels from the ground floor up to the top within our house really easily, but we hardly hear anything from next door except when their teenager thunders up and down the stairs.
If he's your best mate next door then it should be easy enough to ask him if he can hear you chopping the d-locks off the stolen bikes 😉
Build a false wall against the adjoining wall. Insulate it with dense insulation (but remember to leave an air gap (about an inch), then carpet your side. The carpet will help a nats with the sound, but also deaden the sound a bit on your side.The thicker the wall/insulation the better, but obviously you don't want to lose too much space in your garage.
I'm currently doing work to achieve the same, but to convert the garage into a music room/teaching space (my wife teaches bass and guitar)
Simply put - it pretty involved and expensive to do properly! I've got a false ceiling on rubber isolating brackets, double walls with studs on rubber tape and a boat load of acoustic sealant.
Compressor and, particularly, angle grinder = give up now 🙂
careful insulating the compressor too much - they need air flow to stay cool.
Problem with power tools is not just their motors it's the noise they make actually contacting the material beign cut.
You could probably insulate it enough to keep a turbo trainer from disturbing them - any power tool use is going to need a lot of expensive materials and will leave you with a much smaller garage. As an example we did the walls of an alcove in a Victorian house due to neighbour noise - heavy sound insulation, new suspended walls etc etc - cost about £300 for materials to cover 10 sqm.
Its a mid 90s build - breezeblock wall and sound does seem to travel diagonally ie up into their kitchen from my garage. I'm sure it sounds noisy in my kitchen too but I obviously don't care when I'm in the garage!
I'm not too fussed about cost but losing too much space I am as it's not the biggest space. Guess I should get him to use my grinder whilst I'm in their garage to see what I'm up against first
I thought some thick curtain like material on the walls and ceiling might have helped for a cheap version of it
How much are you planning on grinding? I’ve been renovating my house for the last couple of months and just try to plan the really noisy stuff for when I know they are out.
It may be cheaper to move somewhere you don't mind pissing the neighbours off?
Not heaps of grinding but I'm doing an old landrover up and a cafe racer. Maybe I am just best finding somewhere remote for that part of the work but its a bit crappy now its winter and wet!
Think youre right though general consensus is that I'd be a mellend if I did much in a garage attached to other properties?
I think general 'spanners' type mechanical work is fine, 8 hours with an angle grinder cleaning a chassis up probably not.
Talk to your mate, agree times they'll be out, can't be that hard to work around them?
Anyone the other side to worry about?