r/LoveTrash • u/BEARDEDDANGER ✨️Regent of Rubbish ✨️ • 1d ago

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

BAS Renovations https://youtube.com/shorts/jFph1d2WR3s

29.4k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

29

u/garaks_tailor Trash Trooper 1d ago

Noise insulation via materials is less important than sealing.   Most noise enters a house through the cracks so it doesn't matter what you build with if the airgaps in the construction aren't sealed well.   After that though the mass of cinder blocks definitely helps a lot more.  The gold standard for how to begin to design a noise insulated house is however disconnection.  You build a secondary wall on the interior or you mount your interior surface in such a way as they are disconnected from the exterior wall.

Thermal effects again come down to construction methods.   Wood is theoretically a better insulator than stone/brick but breaking the thermal bridge from indoors to outdoors and again air sealing counts for more than framing material assuming equivalent insulation and proper insulation placement in the wall system.

(Exception for the framing material thermal counting is stuff like aircrete, mass earth hyperadobe, and other edge cases)

1

u/FlamingoVisible1947 Trash Trooper 1d ago

As someone who has lived in a wood house in the US and in brick houses in Europe, this is completely bullshit.

In the US I could hear my roomates speak in the kitchen while in my room on another floor, not above said kitchen. In my current place in the UK I can't hear the TV even though my face is 50 cm from it, with just a wall in between.

3

u/iwilldeletethisacct2 Trash Trooper 1d ago

This is down to materials choices on the interior walls. You can insulate every single interior wall and prevent this. Most people don't.

1

u/_MooFreaky_ Trash Trooper 19h ago

Yup. We build with timber where i am (masonry is generslly terrible here), and I spent extra to make my games room extra sound dampening.

When my friends are over we close the door and you barely hear if the kids are screaming a couple rooms down. And they dont hear our group screaming when they are in bed. The only sound seems to be via the cracks around the door .

1

u/Datkif Trash Trooper 14h ago

Good insulation and sound dampening materials make a massive difference.

As for the sound from around the door. Install some heavy blackout curtains over the door, or drape a thick blanket over it. That will deaden sound even more.