Party wall sound proofing.

There should be a picture here. Is there?

I've lived in 3 semi-detached houses. You will always hear noise IMO.

You may sound-proof the walls but sound transmits through the floors too.

We've been looking at this since new people moved in next door that make more noise (kids and adults screaming at each other) than the pervious owner that ran childcare from the house and we hardly heard anything. Common wisdom seems to be it's not something you can half do and if you have dot and dab plasterboard that'll have to come off as it both gives a space for the sound to transmit and acts as a sounding board. 

Posted by: matt303uk

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We've been looking at this since new people moved in next door that make loads of noise (kids and adults screaming at each other), the pervious owner ran childcare from the house and we hardly heard anything. Common wisdom seems to be it's not something you can half do and if you have dot and dab plasterboard that'll have to come off as it both gives a space for the sound to transmit and acts as a sounding board. 

No help but why oh why are almost all semis designed with the lived in rooms back to back?   My parents had a semi where the common wall was the location of the entrance hall, stairs, and bathroom.  Never got sound throigh the walls. Being a big old sandstone helped but it has to be better having two halls and a common wall between you the the neighbours TV.

in the 90s i went to a full on rave in a recording studio. thing was the recording studio was in a row of terraced houses. I have no idea what was involved in sound proofing the room, but there was a heavy sliding internal door and when that was opened the sound went from a murmur to loud.

So yes, you can probably do it, it will cost you, and you will sacrifice your internal space to do so

The better approach may be to deal with the source of the noise first if possible, easier said than done, my mate had some waste of space neighbours move in, proper benefit scrounging wee takers, claiming everything they could. Their kids followed suit, and did nothing useful with their lives. They would stay up all night playing games, loudly talking and shouting on headsets... more than audible to my mate trying his best to sleep. went on for years, complaints to council etc, the best compromise was the council offered to insulate my mates house, costing them the space loss.

There are proprietary systems available, often involving a dense rubber mat, a fibre quilt and plasterboard on decoupling metal lathes. Works fairly well.

I believe some of the natural, breathable, insulation options available are also good for sound proofing as they are high density. Wood fibre boards and cork board, in fact cork board is often marketed as an acoustic product. 

Posted by: Squirrel

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There are proprietary systems available, often involving a dense rubber mat, a fibre quilt and plasterboard on decoupling metal lathes. Works fairly well.

And if that fails, you can always soundproof the wall.

Hi. This is our bread and butter. Give us a call and ask for Technical. Happy to give some free advice.

Sound Reduction Systems 01204 380074

Hi. This is our bread and butter. Give us a call

Just how bad would it have to get before you'd call a number and ask for Mr Sparkle 🤣 

We had our wall sound insulated by the builder doing our extension.  They used a double thick layer of special plasterboard and it had some type of rockwool in between.  Its been excellent.  We did for our neighbours because my boys are noisy 

I can concur that SRS stuff works having come across it testing for building regs during the 2000s. Also beware of copycats though who have simply copied products without doing the lab testing

That said, sound insulation can be done with bog standard building materials too (stud wall and plasterboard essentially). The main gain from proprietary systems tends to be they take up less space, but have to be installed absolutely correctly to work. Success will be gained from paying attention to the details...... which is why so many developer's buildings failed when they first brought in sound insulation testing, you can't hide shoddy work from it.

Give SRS a call. They are very good at what they do. 
If you can’t do the installation yourself look for a builder/ contractor who understands the process and product. 

Depends on construction. Couldn't pay me live in a modern box builder semi detached. That would echo  muffin mans experiences. 

We do live in a semi detached built in 1951. It's build of brick with a brick party wall. More so it's built with 6 chimneys on the party wall back to back. Must be at least 8ft between our actual rooms of solid bricks. 

Even though our neighbour has some difficult fosters and always apologises for the shouting and screams she thinks we must have heard. We hear nothing. 

Infact the only thing I've ever heard was her teenage daughter not being used to the fact that deaf old people don't live next door anymore and turning up her stereo with shitty dance music up to 11 as soon as her mum left on a Saturday morning... My stereos bigger and iron maiden was in the slot. It has never happened again.