that will be why the noise problem, the one hostel I was in around 1991 was like that, if anyone anywhere talked or did anything, I couldnt study! in the end I did my main work at the department, where although I shared an office, I found some large unused offices in the basement which belonged to noone, and did my study there!
Just at today's morning, i was woken up by the neighbor above me, who's little daughter was crying/weeping and stomping their feet just above my bedroom. Mother scolded the daughter many times not to stomp their feet, which i heard clearly through the ceiling/floor, since all that stomping is amplified and is VERY annoying for me to hear (i already contacted the upper neighbor about stomping and now, they try to keep their kids not doing that).
But what amazed me, was when i was lying on the bed, in my quiet bedroom, i could clearly hear all the words mother was shouting to her daughter.
this is the problem I had in the hostel. The university people sometimes did things on the cheap for the accomodation.
if you have the right to modify things, plasterboard and things like fibreglass between plasterboard is the way to get soundproofing. for the ceiling also I think. when I had fibreglass insulation done for the loft, the place became a lot quieter, and also I didnt need the heater so much, as it insulated much better. Before that I had to put on the heating every 20 minutes in the winter.
if you dont have the right to modify things, you could potentially create a sound proof cubicle within the room. It would need some carpentry skills, or if it was me I would hire a carpenter. I give some photos of how both the internal walls and external walls are constructed here.
the original internal walls here have 3 plasterboards per side, and also they created storage cupboards between the 2 largest rooms (lounge and the larger bedroom of 2), so that means 12 plasterboards between this lounge and the main bedroom.
Since i have a doggo, i've asked my immediate neighbors if they can hear my dog bark and if that annoys them. My neighbors have said that they can hear the barks but since my doggo only barks few times a day and not constantly (not like another neighbor's dogs in our apartment building, barking all day long),
dogs are social animals, they cannot stand being alone, in the wild they go in a group. so if a person has a dog which they leave at home, the dog will bark and whine all day long till the owner returns!
I lived in a "studio flat" for a year after I completed uni, where a studio flat is a flat with bathroom, toilet, and 1 large room which is everything else, small kitchen zone and bedroom lounge. someone had a dog like that, which would bark and whine all day.
the way you fix that problem is you need to keep 2 dogs, then the dogs keep each other company.
with dogs such as dobermans, they actually take turns to keep watch. always one will be on guard, and the other might sleep, where they have a group psychology. if you see a group of dogs together, they get very happy.
dogs also dont like silence. Once at a station waiting room, there was a man with a dog, and it was making distressed sounds, then I noticed that any time anyone entered the waiting room it would calm down, but once the door shut it would continue distressed sounds. I figured it was it likes the sounds of the outside world, and doesnt like the silence of the room. so I put something to keep the door open, and the dog calmed down. so there are 2 compounding effects, leaving a dog alone, and also leaving it in a silent room eg no window open.
because you are there with the dog, it wont be in distress.
cats are different, male cats are solitary animals, whereas with say lions, the females go as a group as a pride of lions, with the cubs, once the male cubs become adult they leave the group. this prevents inbreeding. I think elephants also, the males become solitary.
my doggo barks doesn't annoy them at all.
The cross-section of the ceiling/floors here is such, from top to bottom:
1. Carpet. (above apartment)
2. Concrete slab with rebar inside it.
3. Ceiling paint. (below apartment)
the carpet would help insulate sound and heat. my place is ground level, and has a concrete floor, you then have say latexing which is very fine concrete to create a completely flat and smooth surface. they then put a further layer to waterproof that, and then tiles above that. I got bamboo tiles for one room, which are really great, twice as strong as oak and half the price. also no problem from woodworm as bamboo isnt wood but is a gigantic grass, grown in China!
upper floors in Britain can be floorboards, where they can have cables and pipes running under the floorboards. I dont know so much about floor structure, but I think ceilings in the UK have plasterboard. industrial buildings use a different MO, where they have steel girders and concrete, you have to observe ones under construction!
Or when someone has made a better floor at their apartment, then it is like so:
1. Flooring tiles, e.g parquet. (above apartment)
2. Softening/leveling fabric. (above apartment)
3. Concrete slab with rebar inside it.
4. Ceiling paint. (below apartment)
I think you need a plasterboard in addition to that, as that will soften sound, and improve heat and sound insulation.
direct concrete or bricks is unpleasant, and the hardness causes echos.
its bad for your health also to have direct concrete or bricks.
We do not have dropped/suspended ceilings here.
Walls are essentially the same. E.g wall between my home office and my bedroom is (from left to right or vice-versa):
1. Wall paint.
2. Wall putty.
3. Cinder block wall.
4. Wall putty.
5. Wall paint.
Some may have wall paint, others may have wallpaper just on top of wall putty. Depends on individual taste. We have painted walls.
if you put wallpaper that will improve things a bit, you can then paint the wallpaper.
not sure what you mean by wall putty, possibly you mean a plastered wall?
the plasterboards are a factory done version of that, where they have plaster attached to a board. then a cupboard will attach to the board part. its designed to carry quite heavy weights, eg a kitchen wall cupboard filled with plates and things.
And wall between same floor apartments is a bit thicker. E.g, from left to right (or vice-versa):
1. Wall paint.
2. Wall putty.
3. Cinder block wall.
4. Ventilation shaft.
5. Cinder block wall.
6. Wall putty.
7. Wall paint.
All-in-all, the apartment building i live in, was constructed during Soviet time (construction started 1974, ended 1978) and back then, sound isolation wasn't a thought. Instead, constructing cheaply was a priority. So, essentially all Soviet era made apartment buildings
have very poor sound isolation.
here in the UK, the government houses, which in fact are local government supplied houses, which are called "council houses" or "council flats", they have very good structure, but because they are free, the fittings are rubbish, eg they will have cheap vinyl floor tiles, really cheap rubbish kitchen cupboards etc. but the walls and foundation and ceilings will be top quality.
so its like having a top end tower case, top quality cables, top quality PSU, but everything else cheap rubbish!
Margaret Thatcher gave council house tenants the right to buy their council house or flat, and my place here originally was a council house, which the person bought, sold, someone else bought, and sold, and I am approx 5th owner! it was built originally in 1978. when I moved in, it was the original structures except someone had put a new carpet in one room, and replaced all windows with double glazed ones. The kitchen was the original rubbish.
the door was wooden, painted cheaply, mouldy surface! I eventually got that replaced by a luxury door.
2013 I renovated the kitchen, where it went from really bad to luxury. and 2017 I renovated the bathroom, photos of this next, which shows wall structure, both of external and internal walls.
the kitchen is 12' x 8', and the bathroom is just wide enough for a bathtub, plus a square along the long edge. so about 1.7m x (1.7m + bathtub_width).
photos of wall structure:
external wall structure
with this photo, I am having a wide short window removed, then the right side filled in with bricks, and the left side extended by the removal of bricks, enabling one to view the original structure.
lattice for a new internal wall
here an earlier wall was removed, and a new one is being built in a different position to make the bedroom on the other side of the lattice bigger, and the bathroom narrower. The new bathroom extends in the other direction more, so the total size in fact is the same as if it were rotated 90°. on the right they had to hack through the original structure when removing the earlier internal wall.
photo looking into the new bathroom zone
in this photo we have a new internal wall, with a doorway to the bathroom, and in the distance the original wall being reworked.
to the left of the doorway is plasterboards, which are screwed to the latticework. on the left of the doorway you will see 2 plasterboards. on the right is a cheap rubbish council house door! I had all those replaced by luxury ones at the end of the work!
a luxury door might just cost £60.
2 perspectives of the same internal wall
this shows on the left the latticework earlier on, and on the right the same walls where the plasterboards are now installed, where the RHS photo is from a different angle, and I have marked the same ventilation grille in the 2 photos.
photo within the bathroom of where the new sink will be
the construction of all this is very complex and coordinated, involving a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a decorator,
in this photo higher up you see 3 parts of the lattice where the carpenter hasnt yet installed the plasterboards. I only photographed after hours, so the builders didnt know I was photographing. The carpenter will fill those zones with fibreglass before attaching the plasterboard. this new structure just has 1 plasterboard on each side, as I only learnt about the triple plasterboard per side months after the work was completed, from reading the manual for the original house. Otherwise I would have requested they do 3 per side! but they put the fibreglass between the 2 which insulates sound and heat. on this side is a bathroom, so not so much noise problem!
completed basin and oak cupboarding and vinyl floor
although the construction looks like a dog's breakfast, the end effect is luxury! the wall tiles are 75cm x 25cm ceramic ones from Turkey.
another view of completed basin side of bathroom
photo of almost completed bathroom
the basin and cupboarding was an ex display one which I got at a huge discount!
ceilings for newer houses are quite low, this one is about 233cm. that makes it cheaper and easier to do things, and cheaper heating. heat rises, so a high ceiling makes a room expensive to heat.
the original bathroom was really bad, and it jutted into the next room. if you imagine a 3.5m x 3.5m room, and then subtract out a bathtub zone, that was the next room! so I had the walls removed, and made that room fully 3.5m x 3.5m, and extended the bathroom into the wide corridor zone.
anyway, those photos will give you an idea of the british MO for internal and external walls, those external ones are from 1978. the UK does construction differently from all other countries, and it is continually evolving, with some very advanced ideas, and some ideas less good. eg in the UK we have natural gas mains, and most people use that for central heating. the US and Germany dont have this!
today's external walls have a bigger gap, and will have insulation boards with reflective foils, and the gap will be filled with much more insulating stuff than my ones.
if you want outright silence, you need to construct a cubicle within the room, with 6 successive plasterboards, and then also some stuff like fibreglass, fibreglass is quite unpleasant, so there might be some alternative.
constructing the bathroom is lots of components like for a PC, so I did a lot of researching for each, eg the bathtub is carronite, where this is very strong and insulating. the strength means it doesnt sag when you fill the tub, so the sealant doesnt separate. the insulation means the hot water remains hot. the previous bathtub I had to keep refilling with hot water every 15mins. the new bathtub I never have to refill, it remains hot!
in the UK, people who dont know how to build things are called "cowboy builders", as they stand a bit like cowboys!
if you get a building made by cowboy builders it will be really bad. To get everything done properly you have to go via an architect, who will subcontract to competent builders. and in fact it is the architect who ensures everything is done correctly. on youtube you should be able to find episodes of "cowboy builders with Dominic Littlewood", he challenges the cowboy builders who rip people off and do shoddy work. his slogan is "dont get done, get dom". its worth watching an episode, you'll see some really badly behaved unethical people!
But AX1600i is now getting old, initially released in 2018.
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