Soundproofing near you

A useful job starts by identifying the path the sound is actually taking, which is rarely the one people assume. Spend the first part of the budget finding out and the rest fixing it.

In an apartment, three separate things govern what you can do. The building code sets sound insulation requirements between dwellings, and what applies to your building depends on when it was built and what class it is, so ask a designer or building professional rather than assuming. The owners corporation or body corporate has its own by-laws, which commonly regulate floor coverings precisely because hard floors transmit impact noise to the apartment below, and those by-laws can require approval before you change a floor.

Outside the building, each state and territory has its own residential noise rules administered through environment protection and local government legislation, with time restrictions for things like power tools, musical instruments, air conditioners and pool pumps. They differ between states, and they are the relevant framework when the problem is a neighbour rather than your own building. Check your own state's rules and your council's, because a noise complaint about an air conditioner is answered differently in each jurisdiction.

The practical implication for a renovation is to establish the constraints before design rather than after. A floating floor that satisfies your acoustic consultant but breaches a by-law about floor coverings is a problem you will hear about from downstairs, and an air conditioner sited where it is convenient may be sited where it breaches a state noise rule.

In a detached house, sealing and doors usually give the largest improvement for the smallest spend. Replacing a hollow-core bedroom door with a solid one and sealing the frame and threshold transforms a room that people thought needed a rebuilt wall. Sealing the penetrations in an existing wall costs very little and removes the paths that were defeating the construction.

For outside noise, the windows are almost always the weak point, and improving them does more than anything done to the wall. That may mean better seals, heavier glass, a secondary internal window or simply fixing a sash that no longer closes properly, and the right answer depends on the frequency of the noise as much as on the level.

For apartments with impact noise from above, honesty is important: the effective treatment is at the floor above, which is usually somebody else's property, and work done to your own ceiling produces limited improvement for considerable cost. That conversation belongs with the owners corporation before it becomes a construction project, and an independent acoustic assessment is often the thing that makes it possible.

The drivers are how much of the room has to be opened up, whether the existing lining comes off, whether decoupling is included or just extra mass, how many penetrations and services have to be dealt with, whether doors and windows are in scope, and whether an acoustic assessment or any performance target forms part of the contract. A job priced as extra sheets on the existing frame is a different product from one that decouples and seals, and the two will not perform alike.

LokalMatch is where the job starts, not where it ends. Describe the noise, which room it comes from and which room it reaches, whether it is voices, traffic or footsteps, the construction of the wall or floor and your postcode, and building, carpentry and insulation businesses covering your area contact you directly; those businesses pay LokalMatch for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not do the work, does not set or quote prices and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so write the performance you expect into the scope, because in a detached house nothing else will oblige anyone to deliver it.