The Quest for Quiet

Pete Della Pietra, project manager for Gaithersburg-based Natelli Communities, has often dealt with sound-deadening challenges in his projects. He is currently working on an addition to a house that sits on a busy street in Bethesda. The owners requested thicker, double-pane windows to keep the street noise outside.

But he said he actually hears more requests from homeowners for ways to control the noise inside their homes.

"I get requests for heavy underlayments under hardwood floors so that someone walking on the second floor won't sound too loud above your head," he said. "People are now asking for thicker drywall throughout their homes. That gives a home a heavier, denser feeling. The more mass a home has, the less sound transmission within the house itself."

Della Pietra recently added spray foam to provide extra insulation to a customer's home office. Della Pietra's crew sprayed the foam behind all of the office's walls and ceiling to help protect it from outside noise.

"When you are in the room, you feel it. It feels . . . solid," Della Pietra said. "If he wants to work late or early he can without worrying about the sound carrying through other parts of the house. He can be on the phone, listening to music or have his TV on at odd hours and not worry so much about the sound disturbing the rest of the household."

Della Pietra's main advice to homeowners looking to deaden sound indoors is to do whatever is necessary to increase the mass of the areas they are trying to protect from sound. One way to do this is to install thicker-than-normal drywall in certain rooms. The standard thickness for drywall is half an inch. Owners who step up to drywall five-eighths of an inch will dramatically lower the amount of sound that seeps through.

Della Pietra also recommends that owners move from hollow-core doors to solid-core doors that are at least an inch-and-three-quarters thick. Windows should be double-pane.

There are other less-expensive measures. Owners can install underlayments beneath tile or carpeted floors that act as rubber membranes. These are effective mufflers of sound, Della Pietra said.

Those building new houses have the best chance to get a quieter home. Lerner, the builder from Bethesda, said owners can significantly affect the noise level in their homes by working with architects and designers from the start of planning.

Owners interested in a quiet home should avoid the soaring two-story rooms common in many newer colonials, Lerner said. Architects are now designing homes so that walls that butt up against common areas, such as in a family room or entertainment room, are used for closets, bathrooms and other spaces where quiet is not so important. Owners at this stage of the process can make sure appliances such as air-conditioning units are placed where they will cause the least amount of noise pollution.

"This is the time to wonder about things like the laundry room. Where can you put it so that you won't hear it?" Lerner said. "How can we use the closets in our bedrooms to shelter these rooms from the other sounds of the house? It's best to catch these issues at the design phase as opposed to ripping walls off and trying to insulate them."

Even though noise reduction is becoming more important, sound issues generally do not scuttle a home sale. After conducting an informal canvass of members, Amy Ritsko-Warren, manager of communications and media relations with the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, said soundproofing issues have not been deal-killers in the region.

Lisa Nonamaker, a real estate agent with Long & Foster Fair Oaks in Fairfax, agreed. "It seems that it's more of an issue inside the homes themselves than it is for outside noise," Nonamaker said. "The noise has not affected sales in this area."