Noisy room in attic

[jayc89]

I was working from a friends house today - they have a new build which came with a room-in-attic that they use as a home office. They live in a quiet residential neighbourhood but I couldn't help but notice how noisy it was up there, both from cars coming and going and from the rain showers throughout the day. I have no idea of their construction spec.

 

All being well, our plans for the extension was to have our master bedroom in a similar room in attic set up, so it got me thinking - what's the best way to sound insulate these rooms to avoid such noice pollution?

[ProDave]

Was this an official room in the roof or a DIY conversion of a loft?

 

Out house is room in roof with the same level of insulation applied to the loft rooms as the normal rooms and they are just as quiet.  A velux window will give rain noise in a heavy shower, that is all.

[jayc89]

9 hours ago, ProDave said:

Was this an official room in the roof or a DIY conversion of a loft?

 

Out house is room in roof with the same level of insulation applied to the loft rooms as the normal rooms and they are just as quiet.  A velux window will give rain noise in a heavy shower, that is all.

 

It's a townhouse build so I assume it's an official room. The roof does have 4x Velux's running along one side. It's difficult as I don't have another non room-in-attic to compare it to in that area, but it was certainly noisier than I'd like our new bedroom to be!

[Conor]

Probably mostly poor build quality. Just takes a few gaps here and there and you may as well be outdoors. We've rooms with veluxes and when closed, no different from other rooms.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, jayc89 said:

 

It's a townhouse build so I assume it's an official room. The roof does have 4x Velux's running along one side. It's difficult as I don't have another non room-in-attic to compare it to in that area, but it was certainly noisier than I'd like our new bedroom to be!

See how thick the roof build up is?  you get a good idea of that by measuring the depth of the recess that the velux windows are fitted into.  My guess would be very thin, indicating a lack of insulation barely meeting building regs.  

 

If you are building well and well insulated the recess for the roof windows will be a lot deeper because the insulation is so much thicker.

 

My top tip is such a roof is make it a warm roof with insulation on top of the rafters before membrane, battens and tiles, and then full fill insulation between rafters.  That will make a well insulated noise free roof and will be easy to detail air tightness.

[jayc89]

1 minute ago, ProDave said:

See how thick the roof build up is?  you get a good idea of that by measuring the depth of the recess that the velux windows are fitted into.  My guess would be very thin, indicating a lack of insulation barely meeting building regs.  

 

If you are building well and well insulated the recess for the roof windows will be a lot deeper because the insulation is so much thicker.

 

My top tip is such a roof is make it a warm roof with insulation on top of the rafters before membrane, battens and tiles, and then full fill insulation between rafters.  That will make a well insulated noise free roof and will be easy to detail air tightness.

He'd probably think I'm bonkers if I got my tape measure out From memory it wasn't very thick though, no.

 

Thanks for the advice!

[Iceverge]

 

Airpaths, 

 

Low mass roof build-up.

 

No decoupling.