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We've lived in our house for 20 years. In that time thousands of houses have been built nearby and the traffic on our road has increased massively. The noise doesn't particularly bother me, but it really bothers Mrs OWG, to the point that she wants to move. It seems to me that some better windows which cut out more of the noise might be a cheaper and less hassle solution than a house move.
Does anyone have recommendations for windows with high levels of acoustic insulation?
No, but do you really want to put new windows in for the new owners..
I can empathise with Mrs OWG, and better windows aren't going to help in summer when you wants to sleep with the window open, or in the garden.
It's really sad what an absolute blight noise pollution is, and that it's of no interest to government.
Legislation about noise levels on new cars would be a good start. It used to be that you'd have to really want your car to make an obnoxious noise and get a custom pipe, or take the back box off. Now every new bloody car has a button you can press to turn it into a throbber.
I believe secondary glazing is much more effective for sound insulation than completely new windows. Cheaper, too.
Secondary glazing and the gap between the 2 panes makes a big difference to sound, we have just done a project where we internally insulated and sorted out the reveals/window sills and added secondary glazing and it’s made a massive difference to external noise not that it’s very noisy but there is a road 6 floors below and to the side.
basically if you have different widths of glass and a gap you break up the sound, so having 4mm glass in old crittall windows we have 6mm in the secondary, the gap is huge but 10cm+is ideal ours ended up about 15cm. you can get stadep sound glass that is laminated but we didn’t need to go that far and went for low-E glass instead for the energy saving. if you can retrofit secondary or triple to your frames then that is an option.
A decent glazing company can work out what the max width glass you can fit in a frame and spec accordingly, so you could end up with 6mm glass/5mm gap/4mm glass/7mm gap/6mm glass in a triple glazed unit and because the sizes are all different the sound deadening is improved. that would not get close to a big gap say 100mm between 2 panes with one of them laminated, that’s what you get in hotels near airports or busy main roads.
You will want laminated acoustic glazing, something like pilkington optiphon, make sure you get acoustic trickle vents if you need them as standard vents will just compromise the unit.
Though I live on a busy road anyway, I've noticed a huge increase in traffic, especially since covid oddly.
Though the noise inside the house is made worse by the edge sealant around the front facing windows having detached from the brickwork revealing a tiny gap. It's enough to dramatically increase the noise. Old Victorian house with wonky walks plus heavy traffic rumbling away might have caused it.
Have a temporary fix which helps but I need to reseal properly.
Meanwhile my front door has shifted over the years and there's a gap somewhere as noticeable now through that.
I'd look at all possible gaps for noise basically.
Though once someone is fed up with a place, there may be no stopping the desire to move.