Thread: Traffic noise

If you go the fence option, use rough brick (clinker or textured) and have it built with a checker board pattern of indents or some other multi-surface system - this will help to reduce any 'echo' effect & may seem to reduce noise by staggering the noise wave pattern. If your house is rendered this could also be contributing to the apparent noise level.

And plant plenty of dense bushes.

Originally Posted by felixe

Hey ruffly, what was the sound deadening material they used?

Hi Felixe, I think it was whatever was at the hardware stores. From memory, looked like waddings or the fibreglass insulation, covered with foil sarking.

Cheers
Wendy

If you are in a hurry you could try www.gws.com.au
They make wall panel system which is easy to install though it is a bit expensive. Not too bad if you do it yourself though.
It seems to do ok with the heavy noise as well. I live on a freeway and after I installed it near a window, the window doesnt vibrate like it used to.
Gives the look of a rendered wall when finished.

Shane.

I used to be good friends with a guy that had a acoustic insulation company - we shared a warehouse and many conversations about this problem.
Sound acts like water or waves so if you build a fence the sound will roll over the top.
When Sydney built the second runway and there was the threat of a voter backlash about noise the government paid to have some houses noise proofed and some they bought and just demolished.
I think it was cheaper to demolish the houses!
You have to insulate all walls, floors and ceilings. block out any where noise can get in then you wont be able to breath because you have cut of your o2 supply, ie special air intakes needed.
There was that guy on new inventors who has developed an acoustic brick that simplistically is like a brick vent containing a set of pan pipes that the noise gets cancelled in as it passes through.
Or you could sell up?

Originally Posted by Groggy

If you are below the freeway you are in trouble, the roof will need a lot of soundproofing and double glazing is on the cards.

Above the freeway a fence should help a lot and little else would be necessary.

Groggy IMHO its the opposite, if you are lower the noise is negligible if you are higher you hear it.

Go to your nearest bridge and go underneath it, (not too close to get the vibration via the supports) you hear very little then go sit on an embankment above it and check out the difference.

G'day Atregent,
How is it now? You should be well and truly used to the noise by now. When I was 9, the family moved to a quiet house, the road ended a couple of blocks past our place. By the time I moved out 15 years later, a whole new suburb was on the end of that road and we didn't notice any noise. The first week in my new home, I couldn't sleep - too bl00dy quiet!!!
Cheers
Graeme

our street runs onto a service road beside the Ipswich motorway

so we pretty much cop a lot of traffic day and night and you do get used to it.

if we stay at other peoples places we have trouble sleeping because it's too quiet.
mind you i grew up practically next to Archerfield airport and our house was under the flight path of aircraft taking off and landing



on the upside the neighbours never complain if you make a bit of noise at night including noise from power tools

Originally Posted by reybec

....if we stay at other peoples places we have trouble sleeping because it's too quiet......

Geeze you'd have strife out here..... it is so quiet that a beetle flying past sounds like a cropduster & if he hits the tin roof, you'd think he was coming through it.

I was amazed at how quiet it is here, one day we stood at the front gate & listened to the distant roar of a shower of rain that was 4kms away.

Originally Posted by Cliff Rogers

Geeze you'd have strife out here..... it is so quiet that a beetle flying past sounds like a cropduster & if he hits the tin roof, you'd think he was coming through it.

I was amazed at how quiet it is here, one day we stood at the front gate & listened to the distant roar of a shower of rain that was 4kms away.

We have the same here, yesterday while at the house we heard the rain coming about 10 minutes before it got here, makes a racket when it's hitting the rainforest!

Originally Posted by graemet

G'day Atregent,
How is it now? You should be well and truly used to the noise by now.

You'd think so, wouldn't you. It still really gives me the irrits though. There's been a few nights that I would have liked to sleep with the front door open, but way too noisy to sleep.

I've put a double glazed window in the bedroom, which has sort of helped a bit, but not as much as I was hoping for. But, it's a weatherboard house, so I guess I need to be realistic about that too. Acoustic wall and ceiling batts are next on the list.

I think the main issue is the noise wall on the freeway. It's the same one that was put up when the freeway was built, so it's quite old, and doesn't extend over the Warigal road bridge. Truck exhaust brakes don't help much either.

I am starting to be able to tune it out sometimes though, so I guess a couple more years and I'll hardly notice it!

OK! So I'm not sure if my memory is right or not, but, I did once live between a Melbourne freeway (this was before Bracks) and my street frontage.
The freeway was at just below my house ceiling height and the front street about two metres below floor level - the vehicle noise, in the house, was from solely the front street.
I think I recall being told traffic noise (tyres on the road) rises at 15 degrees. This is, of course, a part of the noise creation and perhaps explains why almost no noise pollution came from the back. The freeway bed was at a slight gadient so generated no great engine noises and wasn't a problem.
Therefore you might try placing a baffle high enough to intercept the noise radiating at 15 degrees from the road surface. A solid fence, or a thickish growing hedge but this sounds like years and much work. Both together may be an option.
I now live 100s of metres from a main thoroughfare with traffic lights and a slight rise - when the air is still I clearly hear the engine noise of B-Double gears and revving motor if the truck is having a stop/start journey.

soth

Originally Posted by Tonto

You think you got it bad where we live we get annoyed if more than 20 vehicles a day go past and thats including grain truck semies. Last year one day was blo...dy annoying 150 Variet Club cars went past all blaring their horns when we waved :eek: Tonto

Twenty! We can hear a car coming for minutes, which disturbs the birdsong . Maybe see 8-10 on a Saturday. Any more the local rag would come out I reckon.

We have lived with traffic noise before - you do get used to it. Mind you I never got used to living 1km from Cairns airpport, under theh flightpath. There was an old 707 freighter from the Islands, that we dubbed the 'Thunderbolt' - fcuk it was loud, in the Concordes' league. Literally rattled things about the place.

I have just added a second story on my house on Francis Street, Yarraville. We have about 6000 trucks going past day & night. Yes, there is a curfew but that does not exclude the "local" traffic going to the numerous container parks, ships and petrol depots. The original part of the house is double brick so provided the front door is closed it is not too bad. The front yard is "no-mans-land" as you can't hear yourself think out there.
Upstairs is just rendered blue board and plaster board. We haven't put in any windows that face directly onto Francis Street.
We have double glazed the windows with 6.38 mm laminated glass on the outside of the lead light glass. We are going to keep the sash windows closed that face the street so we have just fixed the outside sheet in the fixed frame.
The windows facing the back yard will be able to open. We have double glazed some casement windows and we open these on hot days to get some breeze through. They are not in the bedroom so we can sleep with those open.
I considered the CSR sound deadening plaster board that they use for home theatres but because of the cost and weight ended up going for the 13mm plaster board. In the walls I put CSR sound check bats (rockwool).
Most companies promote the polyester insulation but it doesn't have any sound deadening qualities.

When we moved upstairs the traffic only worried me for about a week and now it is not bad, even on hot nights when our terrace door (faces the back yard) is open.

The short version- I would recommend CSR sound check for the ceiling as the first step. Then double glazing or thick glass as mentioned by someone else.

Or wait until petrol hits $2.50 a litre and everybody will go back to riding horses and you'll just have the "clip-clop" to complain about