Wood lathe and plaster wall r value
STC and common wall types: Geiler and AssociatesĬatalog of STC and IIC ratings for Wall and Floor/Ceiling Assemblies: California Department of Health Services Together, walls and windows comprise a barrier against noise, and their materials and installation matter. (Save your money!) It can help to absorb noise inside a room (anyplace where people gather), but it won’t stop external noise from coming in. Beware: fabric doesn’t stop bothersome, low-frequency noise from coming into your home. You might see “solutions” like soundproof curtains promoted on the internet. In this short Soundproofist video, you’ll see how windows can be an additional weak spot for external noise. You don’t have to resort to demolition to get small improvements. Single drywall (1/2-inch) no insulation, over wood studs: STC 33 (this is typical in many homes)ĭouble 1/2-inch drywall on each side of the wall, fiberglass batting: 44 STCĭouble 5/8-inch wall with Green Glue on one side, single on other side: 52 STCĮvery situation has unique circumstances, but you usually have options to reduce noise in your home or workplace. What’s not on this chart: comparisons for using other types of drywall (like QuietRock), or more efficient types of insulation (like cellulose or rock wool), or layering Green Glue between a second layer of drywall, which could boost the STC.Īccording to The Soundproofing Company, these are the comparative STC ratings for three different drywall combinations. This chart on Wikipedia offers a comparison of STC ratings for different types of wall treatments, including no treatment. If you want to reduce noise through your walls, you have several options, though all of them involve money and labor.
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And if you do have noise issues in an older home, your solutions might be different. You might not hear your neighbor’s TV, or not as much, if you have plaster walls. Increasing the STC of your walls might help.Īccording to this article in The Craftsman Blog, lathe and plaster walls might have an STC of about 52, which is considered acceptable for a multi-unit dwelling. If your walls offer 33 STC but your meter goes up to 50 when your neighbor watches TV with the volume turned loud, then the difference is passing through your walls. As soon as someone turns on a TV or makes noise on the other side of that wall, some of that sound will pass through to you. The STC rating for drywall on hollow wood studs is about 33 decibels - almost the same as your home when it’s totally quiet. So, let’s say you have uninsulated drywall in your home. This gives you a baseline from which you can measure any other noise. It might read at about 35 to 40 decibels when it’s quiet. Turn off any music, TV, or appliances (like a dishwasher) and use a decibel-reading app on your mobile phone like Decibels, the NIOSH app, or SPL Meter. How much noise passes through your walls?įirst, measure the decibel level of your home when it’s quiet.
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Consider yourself lucky if you live in an older home that didn’t get its walls replaced by an overzealous remodeler. These walls offered more sound and temperature insulation than modern drywall. It has a barely perceptible STC difference from 1/2-inch drywall.īefore the 1950s, most walls were made of lathe and plaster. By the 1980s, builders used 5/8-inch drywall, which has a slightly higher fire rating (up to 60 minutes).
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In the 1950s and 1960s, new wall construction typically consisted of a single layer of 1/2-inch drywall nailed onto hollow wooden studs. If you live in a typical American dwelling built after the 1940s, you probably have walls made of drywall (known as plasterboard in Europe). And if you live in a home with hollow drywall construction, you probably know this already - acoustically, the walls are like drum skins. The higher the STC, the more effective the barrier. So, a very loud external noise of 100 decibels might be reduced to approximately 55 decibels inside your home if your walls have an STC of 45. The STC is roughly equivalent to the decibels that get reduced by a barrier like a wall or a window.
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It measures how a material attenuates airborne noise. STC is the acronym for Sound Transmission Class.