How to soundproof your ceiling against noisy upstairs neighbours
As we’ve all adjusted to staying at home during the lockdown, being stuck in the flat all day has probably made some of us notice how noisy the upstairs neighbours are.
With everyone at home at the same time, expect to hear more stomping, loud music, or lively discussions at all times of day. Unfortunately, most floors and ceilings offer little in the way of insulation against noise. A rigid structure of ceiling boards, joists and floorboards all screwed together will transmit noise, using the ceiling as a drum skin. Fortunately, you can install measures that will break the path of vibration, and make the lockdown period a bit more bearable.
Our Oscar Iso-Mount Type1 acoustic hangers will help you install an effective acoustic ceiling to give you a bit of peace and quiet. The system has been designed to be easy to use. With our engineering heritage we have plenty of experience of installing acoustic barriers so we know the importance of ease of use to save valuable time. It also helps design, as you’ll have to sacrifice as little as 6mm of ceiling height.
I’ve written a short how-to guide if you want to soundproof your ceiling at home:
1. First of all, find the lowest point of the lowest joist as a reference to ensure level insulation. Mark the beam a maximum of 100mm in from the wall to locate the first bracket. Then mark the bracket positions on the sides of the joists – evenly spaced – at 3 per square metre. Each mount has a maximum point loading of 18kg so each square metre can have up have up to 54kg of loading capability which is more than adequate for most domestic ceilings.
2. Next fix each bracket with a minimum of two screws fixed diagonally. Make sure they’re correctly aligned and avoid pipes and cables. Once they’re secured and the levels are checked, you can move onto the channel clips.
3. Starting with the end, slide or clip the channels onto the mounts. They run parallel to the joists so you can fix the Iso-mounts high on the joist which will reduce ceiling height loss.
4. Then, attach our foam self-adhesive strip around the line of the ceiling. This will prevent the ceiling boards from directly touching the walls, creating a noise path. Once this is done, screw the boards onto the channel clips. You can use standard 12mm gypsum boards with no special acoustic properties. Push the outer boards to compress the foam strip against the wall.
5. Seal the boards with Oscar’s acoustic sealant. Once the boards have been fixed, it’s time to install the loose fill cellulose.
6. Cut some small discus from the board. Then fill the void using Celbar, an environmentally friendly, non-itchy, flame retardant and recyclable filler. This can be done by hand, but we do have specialised machines that can speed things up. This will provide outstanding noise and thermal insulation. Once this is complete, replace and seal the discs that were cut out and fix a second layer of gypsum board.
7. A qualified electrician should check if downlighters require hoods and that electrical wiring in the ceiling void is of adequate capacity to handle the high thermal insulation given by Celbar insulation.
If you follow these steps you too can easily soundproof your home against upstairs noisy neighbours.
You can also watch this video which will show the steps as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd6n5tkskHg&t=65s