Soundproofing near you

Approved Document E, resistance to the passage of sound, took effect on 1 July 2003 and deals with requirements E1 to E4 of Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010. E1 requires dwelling-houses, flats and rooms for residential purposes to be designed and constructed so as to provide reasonable resistance to sound from other parts of the same building and from adjoining buildings. E2 deals with sound within a dwelling, covering internal walls between a bedroom or a room containing a water closet and other rooms, and internal floors. E3 concerns reverberation in the common internal parts of buildings containing flats, and E4 covers acoustic conditions in schools.

The limits on application are where the reality sits. E2 does not apply to an internal wall containing a door, to an internal wall separating an en suite toilet from the associated bedroom, or to existing walls and floors in a building subject to a material change of use. And requirements E1 to E3 are applied to a material change of use only in the cases the regulations list, such as a building becoming a dwelling, a building coming to contain a flat, or the number of dwellings in a building changing. A householder lining a party wall in an unchanged house is in none of those categories.

So the honest position is this. If you are converting a house into flats, or creating a flat where there was not one, Part E applies and a building control body will expect the separating construction to meet the performance standards, with pre-completion testing as the normal route. If you are simply trying to hear less of next door, Part E is a source of good technical guidance and nothing more. Part E as it applies to floors is covered in the flooring guide, and E2 for new internal partitions in the carpentry and joinery guide.

Approved Document E describes its wall treatment for existing buildings in terms of what the performance depends on, and that description is the clearest short explanation of the subject available. For an independent panel treatment, the resistance to airborne sound depends on the form of the existing construction, the mass of the independent panel or panels, the isolation of those panels, and the absorbent material between them and the wall. Three variables and the wall you started with.

Mass is heavy board, dense plaster or an added leaf of masonry, and it resists being moved by sound pressure. Isolation is the deliberate structural break, usually an independent stud that does not touch the existing wall, or resilient bars, and it stops vibration crossing directly. Absorption is mineral fibre in the cavity, and it stops the space between the two leaves acting as a drum. Take away any one of the three and the other two lose most of their effect.

For floors the equivalent treatments in the same document are an independent ceiling with absorbent material, where performance depends on the combined mass of the existing floor and the new ceiling, the absorbent material, the isolation of the ceiling and the airtightness of the whole construction, and a platform floor with absorbent material. The mention of airtightness there is not accidental: sound and air take the same routes, which is why a soundproofing job and an air sealing job look similar when they are done well.

Approved Document E's guidance for dwellings formed by material change of use is the closest thing in English statutory guidance to a method for improving what is already there, and it is worth reading even when it does not legally apply. It describes one wall treatment, two floor treatments and one stair treatment, and it is candid that the guidance is not exhaustive and that other designs, materials or products may be used, with advice sought from the manufacturer or another appropriate source.

It then names the three things that undo the work. Flanking transmission must be controlled if the performance standards are to be achieved, and special attention is needed where flanking walls or floors run continuously across the separating element, where additional treatment and specialist advice may be required. Wall and floor treatments impose additional loads on the existing structure, so the structure should be assessed to make sure the load can be carried safely, with strengthening where necessary. And penetrations such as ducts or pipes passing through separating elements in conversions reduce the sound insulation achieved.

There is also an acknowledgement worth quoting to anyone working on an old house: for some historic buildings undergoing a material change of use, it may not be practical to improve sound insulation to the performance standards at all. A guide that admits the limits of its own advice is more useful than a product brochure that does not.

Not every noise problem is a construction problem. Noise is one of the 29 hazards listed in Schedule 1 to the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005, sitting at number 14, which is the framework councils use when assessing hazards in residential property. Where the noise is coming from a neighbour's behaviour rather than from the thinness of the wall, the environmental health route exists and it is free, whereas a soundproofing system is neither.

The two are also not interchangeable. Lining a wall will not stop a genuine statutory nuisance, and a council notice will not make a 1960s separating wall perform like a modern one. Where the source is anti-social and intermittent, the council route is the right first step; where the source is ordinary domestic life audible through a wall that was never built to hold it back, construction is the only answer. Statutory noise nuisance and how councils deal with it is covered in more detail in the generator and outdoor equipment guidance rather than here.

If you live in a flat, read the lease before ordering anything. Many leases restrict alterations to structural elements and to floor coverings, and a covenant about hard flooring is one of the most common causes of neighbour noise disputes in converted buildings in the first place.

Soundproofing quotations diverge more than almost any other trade, because two firms can be pricing genuinely different systems. The variables are which route the sound is taking, the construction of the existing wall or floor, whether an independent frame is being built or resilient bars used, how many layers of dense board are specified, how much flanking work is included, what happens at the perimeter, the ceiling line and the penetrations, how many sockets, radiators and skirtings have to be moved and refitted, and how much floor area the household is willing to give up. Redecoration afterwards is a real part of the job and is sometimes excluded.

LokalMatch's role is limited to making the introduction. Explain the noise problem once, with your postcode and what you have already tried, and specialists working in your area contact you. Homeowners are not charged; the businesses pay to receive enquiries. LokalMatch does not carry out the work, does not influence what anyone charges, and does not vet, rank or recommend the firms that respond, so comparing what each system is actually made of, and whether flanking has been priced in, is worth doing carefully.