So, the entrance to my room has double doors, and they are standard hollow core doors just like the rest of the doors in the house. The wall to the right of the doors is outside of the house, immediately to the left is my closet, and beyond the closet is another outside wall. My room sits directly above the garage, and from the second floor the entrance to my room is in a corner, so my entire room is basically isolated from the rest of the house except for the doors. With that being said, it is astonishing how well sound travels through only the doors. I can hear the alarms of both my roommates going off in the morning at the same time, to the point that i could get by without even setting an alarm of my own, and a conversation happening outside of my room can be understood as if the doors were open. I would like to at least reduce conversation level sounds to a dull mumble, maybe not exactly "quiet" but at least unintelligible. Also i realize that the sound of things like footsteps, slamming doors, and explosions from the sound system downstairs won't be affected very much without some serious re-modeling, so i'm not going there.
There is a significant gap between the two doors, and between the doors and the floor, so i think that sealing the doors with soundproofing tape should be the first order of business. I also saw this, but the details are a little sparse:
http://www.supersoundproofingsales.com/SSP-T-Strip-up-to-7Long-Seals-Gap-Between-Pair-of-Doors/productinfo/T-STRIP7ALUM/ i think this would be doable, but how much more sound does this block as opposed to just sealing the gap with tape? And on the same subject, does anyone know how well these things do on carpet?
http://www.supersoundproofingsales.com/SSP-Transom-Sound-Seal-Door-Sweep/productinfo/09-42746-T/ I would imagine rubber on carpet not being a good situation, but surely someone already thought about that.
Now on to the good stuff... It seems that the most obvious solution would be to replace the hollow doors with solid ones, but the solid wood ones that i've seen so far are over $200 unpainted and not prehung, which i'm assuming means that i would have to cut the slots for the hinges myself. For 2 doors plus paint and hardware i'm probably looking at about $500 plus the cost of the above mentioned items and a full weekend of fun, and this is really not an option for me. Another option would be solid "composite core" doors at about half the price for doors that ARE painted and prehung, however they are also advertised as weighing 40% less than a solid wood door. With 40% less weight, would it even be worth the money and effort of replacing the doors I have?
So the next best thing sounds like hanging a MLV curtain. My doors are 24" x 80" each, and a 4.5' x 8' sheet of MLV would only cost about $40. I was originally thinking about creating a sort of MLV/foam sandwich and attaching it directly to the door, but from what i have read it sounds like hanging MLV as a curtain is the better solution. Maybe i could just attach a heavy foam mat to the door and then have the curtain in front of it? Does attaching foam to the door still do anything with a curtain in front of it? Probably also something important to note, the space above the door is not completely straight across, since my room is above the garage, so the ceiling slopes with the roof of the house. The part of the ceiling that is level with the floor only goes across about 3/4th of the door area, so hanging a curtain means that it has to be hung directly above the door frame, meaning i have to hang 2 separate curtains of different widths and lengths, or i can put a bunch of foam on the wall. This area only extends about a foot and a half above the door frame, so maybe only 6-8 square feet total. What should i do with it? Input would be greatly appreciated
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Topic: Soundproofing solutions for french/double doors (Read 16930 times)