We just remodeled and now have a family room in our basement. This is right under our upstairs living room. All noise in the basement comes directly upstairs. There is duct work running across the basement ceiling to the floor vents in the living room. We have nothing on the basement ceiling right now. Any suggestions of how to reduce the sound coming up? And no, getting rid of our kids is not an option!
install insulation, and or a suspended ceiling...
Those neighbors getting to you? Hahaha, I used to think about this during the short time I lived in an apartment. Good luck! Yeah I would say insulation and if it's possible have a good 8 to 12 inches of it all the way across the area you are sound proofing
I would recommend doing a drywall ceiling instead of drop ceiling and just use a lot of the roll out insulation before you drywall and you can special order a type of specialty drywall from Lowe's or Home Depot called Quiet Rock and one sheet of quiet rock has the sound dampening power of 8 sheets thick of regular drywall. Its great stuff. The other issue is that if that duct work connects to the basement room and the room upstairs it acts as a sound channel and the only way to stop that is to not configure the ducts that way. Keep in mind if you use the quiet rock type drywall you will kill its sound dampening power if you cut holes in it to install recessed lights but you can mount a flush mount ceiling light.
Accoustical privacy is important in some shared spaces. There is sound attenuation batting which can be used between joists & around ducting even w/ a lay in type ceiling. Rigid fiber insulation is available for ducting as well. Regular fiberglass insulation is less expensive if you fill the entire space between joists. There is also sound damping drywall that can be used on ceiling but a double thickness of the regular stuff is less expensive will work ( but double the work) Have seen all of these remedies used on fmr job specified by accoustical engineers. Does not seem to be as much of a problem in residential type frame construction. Take one step at a time.. Might go for the duct wrap first & see how that goes then add batting then see how that goes then decide how you want to finish it off . The ducts are the main culprit but are the easiest part to fix. if needed , under floor batting will help kill noise from above as well as contain noise from below. Best regards
