Earth Friendly Do-it-Yourself Soundproofing Solutions Introduced

Aug. 17, 2009 - PRLog -- You can probably remember a time when you wished the rooms in your home, condo, or apartment had better sound proofing – maybe the vacuum in the living room kept waking up the little one during nap time, or the late night TV in your teenager’s room was distracting you from your book, or the rattling washer and dryer just got on your nerves.

Well, I found some great do-it-yourself, noise-reduction products when I was looking for a way to sound proof my home theater. I’m not talking about a massive home theater, just a simple set-up in my living room. I was getting too much noise transference through the walls and family members were getting sick of hearing movie noise coming into the computer room and bedrooms.

While I was watching Lethal Weapon II in the living room, everybody else was listening to it through the walls. The noise wasn’t obnoxious, but it was just enough to be annoying. The whole situation reminded me of my college days and apartment living, back when you could hear just about everything your neighbors were up to. So, I looked for a solution to keep the home theater sound relegated to the home theater room – and not let it infiltrate every other adjacent room in the house.

I did some internet research and most of the soundproofing information I came across had to do with adding sheetrock to the walls or getting inside the walls and filling the wall cavities with expensive materials. And a lot of the info was talking about professional music studios and how to build one in your home. I wasn’t looking to get that involved and my carpentry knowledge is pretty much limited to hanging family pictures. I’m not even good at that.

I came across something called dB2-4Walls (www.db2-4walls.com) where they claim the stuff reduces noise up to 75%. It’s applied to existing walls, kind of like wallpaper, so you don’t need to tear your house or condo walls apart. You can get it in 4ft. by 8ft. rolls. It just took some simple measuring to figure out how much I needed.

You’ll need adhesive, too. You can apply the adhesive to the wall or right on the back of the dB2-4Walls product. There’s an installation video on the website which is pretty in-depth and helpful – maybe too helpful. An added bonus of this stuff is that it’s made from “post-industrial waste.” Basically, it’s stuff that was headed for landfills that scientists figured out how to turn into stuff to put on your walls to keep things quiet.

So, I bought some rolls and put it up all by myself. It was pretty easy, even for me. For tools all I used was a pair of scissors, a putty knife, and a tape measure. I painted over it to match the color of the room before and to avoid any drastic changes to the look of my place. It’s designed to be painted over. The website also says that dB2-4Walls act as a moisture barrier which is just a bonus.

So, did this stuff block out Lethal Weapon II and keep the rest of my family sane? It did. They say that it reduces noise by 75% and there’s really no way for me to test that, but I’m sure that number is pretty accurate based on the sound test figures and graphs on the website.

The dB2-4Walls definitely solved my noise and sound problem and it was a lot easier to install and less expensive than my other options. Now the wife can surf all of her celebrity gossip sites without being bothered by my movies and the kids can get their homework done without hearing the football game.

My next step will be to silence the laundry room and eliminate the annoying noise from the old washing machine – my wife keeps saying we need a new one, but maybe I can just quiet it down a little.

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The United Plastics Corporation has been creating innovative, plastics-based products in Mt. Airy, NC for over 50 years. They utilize knowledge, experience and state-of-the-art extrusion equipment to create cost-effective, sustainable products.