sunama said:
Brian you have said much about insulating wall, but little about ceilings. In my case, i want to insulate the ceiling to allow as little noise to be heard by my neighbours upstairs. I live on the ground floor.
The solution im looking at is summarised in the link below:
http://www.domesticsoundproofing.co.uk/soundproofing/ceiling_rbars1.html
In your opinion would this be the best solution available for me?
hey sunama,
basically ceilings can be considered really deep walls, but with the added trouble of footstep noise - noise from things hitting the floor.
the new audio alloy site has alot of articles that are more helpful than beofre.
http://www.audioalloy.com/understandingImpactNoise.php that addresses impact noise specifically (footstep noise), and the rest of the basic principles are the same as for walls, except you have a much deeper air cavity, and that helps things like resilient clips or resilient channel perform better at low frequencies.
the best solution is always to build a room within a room, but often that is impractical. the ideal case would be speerate wall studs and ceiling joists with a big insulated air cavity & double drywall + damping all around. to improve on that all you can do is add more mass/damping.
the problem is that this isn't always so practical... the next best option for ceilings are resilient spring hangers or resilient clips. those perform better on ceilings than walls as they have a deeper cavity to work with. resilient channel also works better on a ceiling than a wall for the same reason.
something like GG is compatible/helpful in all of those situations, and can make a very good ceiling by itself as well.
i do beg your pardon for rambling a bit, but i guess its easy to answer the question of "what is best", but so often that ideal is simply impractical.
so the best place to start might be with thinking over what's practical in your case for loss of height, complexity, costs and all.
good luck,
Brian