How to Prevent Shared Wall Noise Bleed?
Most apartment buildings and homes are just not constructed with shared walls treated for blocking noise from transmitting between rooms. Their shared walls actually help sound travel, and the best way for preventing passage of unwanted noise from room to room in your house is treating the common walls so that conduction is not possible.
How is that done?
Adding Density
If you want to prevent the transmission of sound through the walls of your rooms, also known as noise bleed process, you will have to separate the rooms from each other by initially increasing the density of the existing walls with MLV, or mass loaded vinyl sound blocking material which you will tape or nail over the walls surfaces you want soundproofed. Your walls will be prevented from vibrating and conducting sound waves with the help of MLV.
Disconnecting Shared Walls
Once MLV has been used for covering their existing walls, you can proceed for isolating each of the rooms you want soundproofing by disconnecting their shared walls. These shared walls are the main channels through which the sound waves pass from room to room.
Actually you will be building new walls before the shared walls in each room, and the sound waves entering it will be collapsed by the space between the new and existing walls. The sound which really makes it through will be considerably less than it was when leaving its source. You have to create your new walls in your room by the addition of horizontally positioned furring strips at equal intervals from the floor to the ceiling.
Doubling Your Results
Using more soundproofing materials you can additionally prevent noise bleed between your rooms. The joints of your floors, ceilings, and walls have to be sealed with an acoustical caulk of high-grade, and extra layers of both MLV and new drywall added will additionally reduce your noise bleed.
If, as an example, two layers of MLV are used (which aren’t in touch) over your existing soundproof walls, and the seams of each layer overlapping by at least 1/2″, sealing the perimeters of each layer and the overlaps with the PVC seam sealing tape and acoustical caulk, your existing wall will be made much more soundproof. If a third layer of drywall is then added separated from the second layer, a second dead layer is created for collapsing whatever sound vibrations are made through the first one!
While noise bleed through common walls cannot be completely stopped by any soundproofing technique, adding density and disconnecting the surfaces of your shared wall will come very close to doing so as you can reasonably expect!
Acoustical Surfaces India offers free consultation on soundproofing your homes and commercial places. Mass Loaded vinyl noise barrier is the best soundproofing product to control the noise between the walls.