Hey, welcome to home renovation the YouTube channel that's designed to help you homeowners do renovations at home and get professional results today We are talking about basement soundproofing and now I'm not talking about building a little music studio I'm talking about how to separate one room from another and from people upstairs Or how to get a nice quiet space separated from the guy watching Star Wars what the surround sound turnbull on so stay tuned We're going to cover all the different expectations and what you can realistically get for a good value All right, so here we go Let's talk soundproofing now If you're watching this video and you came here because the Google machine has suggested that this is a good way to get information You've been on YouTube maybe seen a few other videos you're seeing a lot of conflicting information out there most guys have a system for soundproofing that they like to stick with and The reality is it there are dozens and dozens and dozens of ways to get a good result with soundproofing. The question is How do you take someone else's information and apply it to your? Situation and have any confidence that you're going to get the result you're looking for? So let's just break it down as best. I can one of the best results or one of the best resources You've got to get information is actually Wikipedia do a Google search and look up STC rating ok the sound transmission class and What you're going to find there is charts and they'll show you all kinds of diagrams of all the different wall assemblies that you can make and how quiet Those systems are ok and the higher the rating number the quieter or the better result you're going to get So we are in a residential home. It's wood construction. We're in a basement We have central heating and air conditioning system And so as a result, we've got a lot of complications here if you're gonna try to get a good result So if you're renovating a basement or you're putting in a theater room Or you're adding a bedroom to a basement and you want to know how do I make this quiet or let's say you're putting in a secondary suite in the basement I'm gonna go through all the different options that you have to get a great result and some of the things that you can do that aren't gonna make you as happy as you think though they're gonna cost a lot of Money, so let's stick with us today We'll start off by telling you that what you're looking for is a sound transmission classic. It started its class 40 ok Now that's fancy talk for if someone's talking loudly in the next room You can hear a little mumbling but you can't make out the conversation the kind of performance most people are looking for is I Want my husband in the basement watching Star Wars on his surround sound full blast with all of his buddies And I can be sitting in the living room right above them Having a drink with my friends and we don't hear all that silly noise Okay, so that is where most people are trying to live and that's their expectation now max Let's take a quick look at the ceiling here And we'll talk about the problems All right. Now this is an i-beam construction and generally speaking with ceilings Because we've got these duct works. They're going to connect to the main trunk lines and the cold air returns upstairs Downstairs and If you really want to have a quiet room You need to remove these from the basement and don't have any heating system from the forced air furnace You've got to go to radiant heat flooring or no matter what you do. You're going to be disappointed. All right I'm just telling you that straight out you might find that spending a thousand dollars of room to put it in floor heating It's gonna be worth the investment Because otherwise trying to get rid of that noise transferring through the house is never gonna happen Let's face it when we were kids. We all used to sit there with our ear to the register Listen to mom and dad Talk about what we did that night before they're so upset about to find out how much trouble we were in And it's the same system today as long as these pipes are connected that noise travels through the house there's nothing you can do to stop it now if you're just looking for That class for tea or maybe a class 50 where people can be yelling You have a large noise in the next room and it's not really going to bother you You can hear it a little bit, but it's not going to bother you That's probably a more realistic approach to soundproofing and that's where we're gonna head today We're gonna talk about a good system a better system the best system and then the most awesome system ever We're gonna give you four different ways to soundproof let you choose the differences that are gonna suit your needs Who there's a lot to cover? So let's just get started So there are really only two elements to soundproofing that you're gonna be able to get involved with and one of them is a Cancellation. Okay sound cancellation Which is sound moves in waves and so there's a product called resilient channel on the market It's a metal strapping instead of wood and has a bunch of little holes punched in it And as the sound gets that metal it hits those holes and creates all these little waves It's like throwing a rock in a pond over and over and over again all the waves cancel each other out, okay now if you took the sum total of all those rocks and dropped it in like a boulder you'd get a tidal wave well, Though what this does is it takes that tidal wave a sound? And it breaks out it up into little pebbles and cancels the noise out and that can be helpful But one of the best ways to deal with it is just sound absorption and that is just the deadening of the sound Alright, just making it so hard for that sound to move through It's just such a dense material that you end up with that happy result where you might hear a little something But it's not gonna wreck your day. Ok. So what we're gonna use here on this ceiling Instead of filling it full of mineral wool insulation, which to be honest with you If you do it, like a lot of these guys on the TV shows are showing you two layers. It's r20 It's a lot of insulation in there and it almost runs you probably 2 or 3 dollars a square foot To sound proof of sealing and it still doesn't work It doesn't give you as good a result as you think now if you're going the company websites They're gonna be really impressed with their product and show you all kinds of great data but if you look at the STC ratings For mineral wool. You will find that it is not as great a perform as you think and it doesn't perform much better Than fiberglass, which is less than a third of the price So when I do my sound transmission, I like controls. I like to use fiberglass and two layers of drywall or What I'm gonna do here two layers of five-eighths which is fire rated drywall And that is so dense that material that if you put one layer of 5/8 on and then you use a green glue acoustic ceiling Which basically goes on? Like this kind of floor mission, it creates a tiny air space between the two layers of drywall That'll kill almost all the noise coming through So two layers of drywall with the green glue is all you need on a ceiling and that'll give you a great Soundproofing without all the fuss of putting all that crappy stuff above your head in the ceiling and it'll save you a fortune Now because we're putting two layers of drywall on I need to extend this box which is why I'm doing this so that my finish Is right here flush with this box and that way I can use my wrote is it to cut the drywall as our install? Okay, so just so that we don't get anybody too confused We're gonna go through the good better best and a most amazing soundproofing system You can have the good system is two layers of 5/8 drywall on the ceiling with no insulation Alright, that'll give you a really good quality control and in most cases the best way to soundproof a ceiling is dependant on the flooring above so if you have an under pad Under your laminate or if you have carpet Or if you have an inch and a quarter of plywood before you put on your tile You get great soundproofing effects from those flooring systems, even if you don't have insulation if you want to get better You have to add some insulation. So I Know That there are lots of people out there in the TV world who are being Endorsed and told to go out there and buy mineral wool insulation Okay, and it says ooh, well, it's fireproof as well. Isn't that lovely? We can all sleep at night knowing that we have fireproof insulation in our ceilings The reality is two layers of type X drywall On the ceiling gives you over an hour of fire protection So adding an extra layer of fire protection inside the joist cavity is ridiculous Your smoke alarm is going off after three to five minutes There's no way that that insulation is even going to be relevant in that situation. Just a regular fiberglass batt Has so much air pocket in it Then it absorbs and it helps to dampen the sound and so since we're gonna do a really really intense system here I'm gonna put some insulation in this cavity just so that it's not redundant I don't want the noise from that room coming across and down through the ceiling So I'm gonna put these bats in and that'll help to eat up a bunch of sound Now remember when it comes tone to the sound transmission class The difference between fiberglass and the mineral wall is only one or two points so it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend two dollars a square foot in insulation when you can get this stuff for Pennies, but that's just my opinion No one paid me to have it Now that's old school The old fiberglass bats used to have glass you need to wear gloves a lot of the newer products It's a lot easier on the hands and I've been working with these hands for so many years. It doesn't bother me but you know, if you're not familiar with this kind of product, you might want to wear a mask and gloves itself you Okay, we're basically done now. It's time to hang some drywall So I've got my drywall lift here. This is an awesome tool Amazing when you're working alone You can rent these at the local hardware store At least you can where we are hurt in the comments section of some of our other drywall videos that people can't find them But if they're not available at your local hardware store Then feel free to check the tool rental store and if that's still not working for you You can buy a lighter weight version of this for a residential use for less than $200 on Amazon It goes together that easy So we're using 10-foot sheets of 5/8 fire-code drywall and the reason for that is because it's in super dense It's also super heavy So we're using the drywall lift because there's no way I can install this on a ceiling by myself But with the assistance of the lift, that's probably quite easy to do except for lifting it in place dear. God Max was like oh I want to see if you can put that up there all by yourself. Now the trick to this is of course have the drywall White paper facing the lift so that when you install it it's facing down You don't want to go through all the trouble of lifting this up and then putting it on the wrong direction. Oh Boy let's see if this will go up We got it and then it tilts And if it's in the middle ish This won't happen But don't worry about it. It won't slide off we're just gonna crawl underneath here and tighten her up Lift it in place roughly Here we go, I'm just trying to try to get it Did you do a little bit more this way I want to clear my box a little bit Yeah There's the best thing about this lift, you know You can get it pretty much exactly where you want it before you tighten it up to the wall Alright dear Lord Okay You might notice I'm using a special drove here cute little dimple are made for drywall screws And this goes on your impact Doesn't really fit but doesn't fall out. So it works generally a regular drove with a truck works better But I love the sound of the impact helps. Keep me awake Alright I don't see minutes over here Good Because we're going to be using another layer drywall I'm gonna use a two inch sorry two and a half inch screw that point and then I'll go with more screws But for now the goal is just to hold it to the ceiling Well, let the second layer keep it all nice and tight forever and ever. All right, so this is green glue This is a kusik sealant this is actually um Not designed to seal as much as to create a ridge of the sealant so that when you press it up and screw it into place it leaves a tiny air gap between the two drywall sheets and Apparently that is going to kill most of the sound in this room So the instructions say the lay on the floor add the bead you imagine having that on the floor and then trying to put that in place, so What we're gonna do is we're gonna just do this like this and it's supposed to leave a few inches around the outside Oh, that's lovely Okay, leave a few inches around the other side Now this washes off Your clothes and your hands with soap and water So don't be too alarmed if you make a bit of a mess It works really well If you can have somewhat of a consistent bead and it runs about one tube for every sheet of drywall There we go now Here we go And if you're not lying it in this sort of a manner You will have enough to get it on a sheet of drywall runs about twenty bucks a sheet But this green stuff gives you another sound rating believe it or not above five Five just for the caulking Unbelievable, so two layers of drywall without this cocking versus two layers of drywall with this cocking it's almost five difference All right, we're gonna make sure we can complete the joints here. Try not to leave anything ugly And before it all runs off all over the ground We're gonna lift it in place. Yeah, now we're gonna stagger the joints. So this time We're gonna start on the outside wall coming back this way Last sheet was cut at forty four inches. So now we're gonna be overlapping our joint and that helps as well With making sure that your drywall won't crack as well as making sure that your soundproofing is really efficient So now we secret here is to raise this into place And at the same time not having to take it down and reposition too much. Okay That's why we've got press right against the outside wall Be nice and easy with it Now we've got five days plus five eighths which makes inch and a quarter So I've got to use a two and a half inch screw I want to have at least an inch of thread in the wood on the bottom of these Just to make sure I got positive contact So, there we go That's our two systems for doing ceilings one systems with the insulation One system with that now either one of those. There's going to be a really good performer for you And remember you're only gonna get so much performance as long as you've got a heating system in the room But if you go to layers with the green glue or two layers of insulation or just two layers at all Okay You're gonna be so much happier with the result then if you try to spend all that money on Insulation in the ceiling and go in half-inch drywall don't disappoint yourself get the five eighths and do it Right and you're gonna be really pleased now The next thing we're gonna do is we're going to show you how to do a decoupling wall And that's a lot of fancy talk for a wall in front of a wall So we're gonna separate Because this wall in this particular situation is a home theater on the other side and the speaker is gonna be mounted inside this wall so what we want to do is we want to close this up and then build a new wall with a narrow space and insulation and two more layers of 5/8 drywall just to guarantee that Whoever's gonna be on this side of the room is going to have their own piece of coy Okay, so we've shown you a good way to do ceilings a better way to do ceilings and not just ceilings that works with walls As well because it's all the sound transmission class and it doesn't matter where it is It has the same effectiveness now, we're going to talk about How to separate a really loud space from a quiet space and I'm just gonna do a little quick little diagram here Traditionally you have a wall and this represents your plate. Okay, and you'll have studs on your plate usually 16 inches on center alright, and that'll mean what the look wall looks like from above so if you put a layer of drywall here and a layer over there and You insulate the space? All right, you'll get about a 40 rating if you're using 5/8 drywall Not bad, but 40 is still if someone's in this room talking you can kind of hear them over here But you can't really make out what they're saying if they're talking loudly you can hear every word That's not good enough if someone's using a theater room because over here we got the speaker and it's really blaring right So the way we're gonna separate this is we're gonna make this assembly and then we're gonna leave an airspace. Okay We're gonna build another wall Okay, but instead of 16 inch on center we're gonna go with 24 on center Okay, because one of the problems with walls is that every one of these studs is actually your enemy it transmits sound It's the space Between the wall that actually gives you the opportunity to absorb it which is why insulation is so effective because it's full of spaces So by creating another air space and then a wall and then another double layer of drywall We're actually gonna create a wall system here that has a sound transmission class in excess of 65 All right, and what that means is you can have Star Wars surround sound Top is you can go and on the other side right here. You're going to someone in their bed, and they can be sleeping Brilliant now this is the kind of system You need to remember to get this kind of a sound for this entire room You have to get rid of the heat supply and put in a floor radiant heat in a basement But if you are just separating from us one room to another room on a floor this system here will do such a good job People in this room. We're gonna have no problem at all being comfortable without being irritated by what's going on next door so we're going to just demonstrate how to build that and then you can follow along in that same procedure at home and have an amazing sound control in your basement This also works really well If you have two bedrooms upstairs and you have two kids that have different kind of lifestyles and they drive each other nuts You know what I'm talking about, you can actually build a wall inside the wall Okay, and then insulate that and create that same sound barrier so you can have one room you can have one child who's living and playing their music and top it along and screaming on their phone with a friend and then The other room we can have someone who's busy reading books and studying for exams So this will work really well in that situation as well and you're only gonna lose about four inches on the wall That's pretty good compromise, and it'll give you great sound control and a happy home That's a great system for do-it-yourselfers just screw a couple blocks in measure down 48 and a quarter-inch make a mark. Let's draw your block Guaranteed you just got to have to do a little bit of a lift You'll hold your drywall in place while you're assembling Before you turn around to go pick something up measure up a cup of feet Put a screw in a little higher because I've seen there's a lot Someone will open a door to come into the room to see how you're doing And there'll be a difference in air pressure And the sheet of drywall get pulled right off the wall If you don't have a screw higher up I'll land right on your head while you're sitting here working That's the max isn't you can avoid? So one of the challenges we have here is we have a existing electrical in this wall Now I know for a fact that that electrical box has got extra wire attached to it So I can actually remove it from the wall bring it through this drywall and attach to the new stud wall With no issues at all But I'm gonna do that. I got to cut a big enough hole that can access the staples and the screws and then I'll Bring that through and then I'll put that drywall back in place There we go Now if you are really really really really concerned about Your sound transmission and making sure that this is the quiet as possible there is actually instead of the green bean There is the orange the orange is used for joints you could actually fill this up but the goo as well if you liked But for me, I might take a look at the whole square footage of this wall, and I had one little gap here Considering how good the sound transmission class is on this next section. I'm not going to get too worked up over it There's a little secret for stitching together drywall seams that don't land on a joist. They don't always have to The reason we always try to join drywall on a joist or a stud Sorry is to make sure that it's all attached to a piece of wood. So nothing is moving around and cracking You can achieve the same result by stitching it together So what I do is I just take a little piece of strapping Boom screwed aligned now, I've got a screw surface that actually connects both pieces of drywall the same way a stud would It's a lot easier than trying to cut and measure on a stud line. You can just do this in a quick hurry All right, now we have this closed up but they're 5/8, so the original part of the the wall is finished It's time to leave an airspace build a new wall If you want to learn how to build a wall in an interior space on concrete, then you can watch our video There'll be a link in the description below So we're here ready to finish the second part of our wall assembly so it's a decoupling system when we have one wall Separated with 5/8 drywall and then our new wall. It's insulated now. We only went with our 12 It's not necessary to buy like our 30 or something. It's not necessary. The airspace does a lot of the work here The installation is just so that the drywall at the drywall with a dead space it acts like a it's this skin on a drum And it sends that transfer right across the other side and you can actually see these things vibrating when there's loud noises so putting the installation there just interrupts that transfer and that's what makes this so effective now, I Would suggest your best-case scenario is to go 24 inch center The less would be put in the wall the better The only other thing you can do to improve on this system would be to add resilient channel. Alright or a hat trim These are just different types of bent metal to separate the wood from the drywall and it'll give you an extra point or two But like I said, if you're not going to remove the heating system in your room, there's no sense worried about being that perfect Nice quick way to cut your drywall Now this stuff is a lot stiffer it's not just gonna snap We want to do is you want to hit it with your full arm Over the course of a couple feet while pushing from the top There you go You do that, right You'll sit there all day long bending and fighting and Driving yourself crazy a cool thing about this tool is that the inside is a channel? It has it's a rasp as well So when you're done cutting this stuff we're cutting it pretty exact, but it never never really cuts exact They're brakes with different fronts and backs and so if you don't want to have resistance when you're putting it into the ceiling Let's take your rash to it real quick There you go. Clean it down that makes life a lot easier Oh All right, yeah, you can do it alone but dear God Even if you have to owe your neighbor a favor, it's probably worth it to get some help We're almost done I've just got one more layer of drywall to put on this layer I started from the bottom going up the next thing I'm going to start at the top going down that'll stagger My joints problemcome finished this whole process of complete All right, and this wall right here is gonna give me a sound transmission of at least 60 All right, that's fantastic. If you can get a 60 in your house, you're gonna be so pleased with that It's gonna outperform your expectations. Remember, you only need a 40 All right unless anywhere you go whether it's gonna be mixed welling or It's going to be for any other purpose if you can get a 40 you're fine, and that is two layers of five days All right, if you add insulation add the green glue You're going to be up to probably 50 To get the 60 decouple your wall now. These are generalized situations Like I said go online take a look at the specific situations that you're gonna need Not too often the government or any kind of building situations gonna say you need to have this exactly in a residential home So in your place if you just want to know what's good better best or amazing Like I said two layers I'll get you 40 If you want to do better add some insulation and if you want to do really amazing add the green glue and if you want to make it so that you are gonna be in your sanctuary go this system decouple your wall good better best and awesome is Available, but just remember you can't have awesome if you're gonna be running heat ducts into your room get rid of that add your in Floridian heat and you will be in a This is gonna be the cone of silence All right. Listen, thanks a lot for watching this video And if you have questions about all things related to keeping things quiet then put them in the comment section below I will answer those questions for you every single day to help you out so that when you soundproof your room You're not going to be disappointed with your results Alright, if you like this kind of video content, give us a big thumbs up Don't forget to share it on your social media sites. Check us out on Instagram. We'll see you again in the next video You
