# Forum Home Renovation Structural Renovation  Sound proofing external wall

## BDM

Hi i have a 120 year old Timber home in Melbourne. One side of the house is the boundary wall. We are about to do another Major renovation and would like advise on sound proofing the side of the house wall. We also live in a heritage overlay area and cannot change the appearance of the weatherboards on the outside, so all the work will be done for the inside on the house  
Regards

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## Bloss

Do a search on this site as there are plenty of good posts on soundproofing. 
Fundamental to all sound proofing is density - that's why lead is so good and why a brick wall is better than a timber one. 
And sound needs to be attenuated from all sources to be effective - ie: walls floors and ceilings on that room abutting your boundary. 
In your case you could line the internal walls and/or ceiling with an additional sheeting material - regular plaster board (and I have used double thickness, ie: 20mm, to enhance noise insulation) or a specialised plaster board designed for sound attenuation (such as Gyprock Soundcheck acoustic board). 
Brick or block feature walls are another option with Hebel blocks being a reasonable alternative that are suitable for a DYIer. You can also specialised denser rockwool batts to line behind false walls and to put under floors etc as well as various styrofoam solutions. Most of the things to do are similar to getting a home more energy efficient - double glazing (but for sound attenuation using vacuum in the gap) sealing gaps etc. In the situation you describe you will not have direct noise generation to deal with (such as occurs when a wooden floor is the ceiling for a room below). 
Depends how much noise there is likely to be, how much you can tolerate (and at what times of the day) and how much you are prepared to pay. 
Visit Rod the plasterer's website at http://www.how2plaster.com/ - always full of good tips and info - he reckons the extra dough for special plasterboard is not worth it.

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## seriph1

Friends of mine live in a Californian Bungalow in Bell Street Coburg (bloody noisy all the time) and lined their bedroom with refrigeration panels from a shipping container - then they applied the plaster on top. I was staggered at the difference between the two rooms - one with, one without the panels. 
The loss of around 100mm from the room size was negligible and the benefits huge. there was a bit of messing around to deepened window reveals etc. but it wasn't that hard to do..... just a thought.

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## fubar

goggle ortech  or durrapanel  these are what we make sound recording studios from and the panels can be screwed directly to your stud wall then plastered

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## pharmaboy2

> Hi i have a 120 year old Timber home in Melbourne. One side of the house is the boundary wall. We are about to do another Major renovation and would like advise on sound proofing the side of the house wall. We also live in a heritage overlay area and cannot change the appearance of the weatherboards on the outside, so all the work will be done for the inside on the house  
> Regards

  bdm, you are going to need to have the right solution to the right problem - there are many causes and many solutions.  my personal solution for an exterior weatherboard wall, was to hang mass loaded vinyl on the outside of the studs, add firecheck and then new cladding (or replace old).  if doing the interior only , the big advantage for mlv is its only 2ml thick, so you could pull the gyprock off your walls - hang mlv down each wall, re gyprock with a heavy firechek, (maybe 16mm) and you will get a wall now up there with a double brick (at least for mid frequencies). 
mlv can be got from insulation industries -  the 4kg/m stuff is $21 per 1.35 *1.0 m length. 
i recomend searching for "soungproofing forums" and having a read - the problems are extremely complex and depend on many variables.

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