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1) Use a sealant: For best results, apply an acoustical sealant to every air gap, such as gaps around the perimeter of the wall, between wall panels, and around any penetrations made for plumbing or electrical wiring. The smallest air gap in a wall assembly can cause a large decrease in the noise reduction.
2) Touch the ceiling: Install the wall panels all the way up to the ceiling of the floor above. Even for a wall partition designed to reduce 90% of the noise from an adjacent room, if there is an open air cavity above the two rooms, the unwanted sounds will find their way through the ceiling. This also may be remedied by designing an acoustic treatment for the ceiling as well as the partition wall. Such a solution, however, is much more costly than simply extending your acoustic barrier up to the ceiling above.
3) Beware of penetrations in your wall partition: Wall penetrations include any electrical wiring, HVAC duct work, and piping. Seal off any piping, electrical output boxes, and duct work with acoustical treatments. You can treat the junction boxes with acoustic putty, such as QuietPutty and treat the piping and duct work either with fiberglass duct liner or damping material (QuietCoat) or both.
4) Check your doors and windows: Doors and windows can contribute to the noise leakage of a partition as well when they are installed in the wall partition (not as common) or when they are directly adjacent to, or in front of, one another. Treat the frame with gasket material (weather-strip) and install a security flap on the bottom of the door to seal it off. Solid core doors perform much better, in general, than do hollow core doors. Install sound-rated double-paned windows with proper weather-stripping, or use specialized high-performance acoustic-rated windows like QuietHome Windows.
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