My Nelson home gets more external noise than my former in Wellington. At 5am most weekdays some poor sod heads off to work and their car driving by wakes me up, and we’re never far from the ever-running tyre hum of SH6.
In an effort to solve this, I threw many thousands of dollars at retro-fitting double-glazing into aluminum windows. I don’t think it did anything. Unless you’re replacing the frames with swanky sound-sealing fixtures don’t even bother. Learn from my pain.
My desperate follow-up sound-reduction remedy is the topic of this post: moving blankets stuffed inside curtains.
In summary, it does take a bit of the edge off sound, and will be adding considerable thermal insulation too, for a couple of hundred bucks. It isn’t a game-changer life-hack, it only helps a bit – but a little does a lot sometimes with sound. It’s noticeable, so it’s at least 3 db difference (the limit of human noticing). I couldn’t find much online about this so thought I’d throw my experience out there – here’s what I did.
The current curtain ran on an old above-window simple rail, more suitable for net curtains I expect. Our current curtains had a 13cm ‘pool’ at the base, so I bought a new rail and mounted it another 10cm up the all above the window (into the window lintel so into wood all the way). I put the existing curtains on that.
On the ‘old’ rail, now to be the ‘insulating one’, I bought some curtains from Briscoes with a thermal lining. Ensure it’s a lining, not a coating! A lining is another fabric, so you get two bits of fabric and can insert something into the pocket. I bought curtains that were ‘short’, i.e. they fill the gap without being gathered – they lie reasonably flat. This limits the bulk-out with the other curtains when they’re bunched and avoided me buying another moving blanket and cutting them per curtain. This is a ‘faux-saving’ mind you; more blanket would be better – the project is all about adding that fluffy bulk to your wall.
The unbunched curtains are 170cm wide x205cm drop, an the moving blankets are 180cm wide 200cm ‘drop’.
Into the curtain pocket I stuffed moving blankets ($15 NZD), just like a duvet. I folded my excess moving blanket over – you might like to cut it. Unlike a duvet, these will be standing on their ends, so I dusted off my form 2 sewing skills and stitched the blankets in.
And that’s it. I honestly expected it to look worse! Sound dampening is great, the room feels a bit like an oasis from background sound. They somewhat work even when they’re open, as it’s bulk to the un-insulated 1970s walls.
Better cheap-ass living everyone.
Note we have a grotesquely sunny and dry bedroom. I suspect moving blankets, being at least partially made with synthetics, will be poor on moisture compared with perhaps some old woollen blankets. The problem is, old woollen blankets are awfully hip and expensive and you can’t be assured to buy-on-demand like a moving blanket.
I haven’t had this set up long enough to see if there’s any moisture buildup/mould issues, but I expect if you have weepy windows or dampness already, this sort of thing might make it worse in the corners. Also in an ideal world they’d be mounted higher than the window, so the blanket covers the whole aperture; at the moment there’s the whole pleated strip that’s not insulted blanket. They’d be better in the ‘above curtains’, but I didn’t want to mangle those ones.
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