Shhhhh! Best Home Building Techniques for a Quiet Home

Noise can drive you crazy. Your neighbor with  his leaf blower early in the morning.  A barking dog at night.  Your kids  playing their favorite video game for the hundredth time. And you’d rather not hear those sounds coming from the bathroom walls.

If you are thinking of building  a new home, there are  lots of options to turn down the volume and create a serene oasis:

The Floor Plan:
The least expensive option. You can put the master bedroom on the first floor with no room over it. You can put an office between two quiet places – the front hall and the master closet. A good option for a media room can be over the garage. The two story foyer you love does look elegant, but it’ll also send noise to second story bedrooms.

Floor and Walls:
When the floor plan can’t resolve sound issues, use a sound-deadening product for floor and walls.  Soundboard is an insulation board that goes behind the drywall.

Windows:
Enjoy increased energy savings AND a quieter home too. A good choice for damping sound is  a double or triple pane window.

Insulation:
Using closed cell polyurethane spray foam insulation on a home can achieve 40% home energy savings.  The spray foam also fills many crevices and difficult spaces, creating a better sound barrier.

Solid core doors:
These block sound more significantly than hollow core doors. Also consider adding weather-stripping and a threshold to the door to quiet the equipment room.

Soft close hinges for cabinet doors, drawers and toilet seats:
They virtually eliminate the “banging”.

Insulate the plumbing waste pipes. 

Eliminate sound wave vibration:
Certain sound waves cause vibration which is amplified as it passes through walls. When ever possible, locate items that cause noise and vibration (ie., the big screen TV, clothes washer, dish washer) to exterior walls rather than adjoining interior walls.  For speakers in the wall and ceilings, you can dampen sound with sound batts made from dense glass wool, or a product called “mass loaded vinyl.”

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Now close your eyes… feel the serenity and inner peace that is not disturbed by jet skis racing past your lakeside abode. No bass booming from “Top Cun”  playing in the home theater. You have a energy efficient quiet, comfortable and peaceful home – At Last!