Prefabricated house, poor sound insulation

Hello, I live in a prefabricated house (single-family house) built in 2017. Unfortunately, the walls in the house are very thin-walled. For example, if you put your ear to the wall, you can hear people on the street talking. Or when cars pass by, there is a droning noise inside the house because the exterior wall is probably too light/thin. The exterior wall consists of 80 mm polystyrene insulation boards, 12 mm OSB boards, 140 mm interior insulation, and 12 mm gypsum fiberboards. What options are there to make the construction company carry out repairs? Would it make sense to have an acoustic report prepared? Would appreciate help! Regards Theo

Hello, first of all, thank you for the responses. I will first replace the window glass with soundproof glass. I hope that will already help. And whether I then have something done on the facade or double-layer the interior wall, I don't know yet. If anyone has an idea about that, feel free to get in touch. Regards Theo

For example, you can hear people on the street talking if you hold your ear against the wall.

As long as it is quiet with the ear in a normal "living position," that's not a problem.

Or with passing cars, there is a droning in the house because the exterior wall is probably too light/thin.

The droning of the cars inside can also be caused by a bad resonance coupling. You can measure (have it measured) what resonates and quite easily improve it. This would be independent of the wall thickness. It does not have to be caused by the wall thickness itself.

What options do you have to make the construction company rectify?

None unless they have not built according to standards or contract.

Would it make sense to have a noise assessment made?

Probably wasted money. Get an acoustician to locate the problem and not an assessor who just measures. The acoustician can then tell you whether an assessment and going to the construction company will help—or solve the problem right away. The perception of noise is very subjective. Perhaps you are simply not "standard-sensitive."

I will first replace the window glass with soundproof glass. I hope that already helps.

I would implement Hampshire's suggestion first. You can also temporarily place something insulating in front of the windows as a test to see whether the measure with the windows is going in the right direction or not.

I will first replace the window glass with soundproof glass. I hope that already helps.

Just for understanding. You have a house within the 5-year warranty period and think it is too noisy. Instead of having an expert report made, which could also reveal the reasons and allow you to have the construction company carry out repairs, you just want to replace all the window glasses yourself? And if that doesn’t help, you’ll move on to the wall? You don’t have to understand that, right? Many greetings! mini

Is there a decentralized ventilation? That is always a point to consider.

As long as it’s quiet with the ear in a normal "living position," that’s not a problem. The droning of the cars in the room can also come from a stupid resonance coupling. Here you can measure (have measured) what resonates and quite easily improve it. That would be independent of the wall thickness. It doesn’t have to be due to the wall thickness itself. None unless they did not build according to standards or contract. Probably wasted money. Get an acoustician to locate the problem and not an expert who just measures. The acoustician can then tell you whether a report and going to the construction company will help – or solve the problem right away. Noise perception is very subjective. You might simply not be "standard sensitive."

Has anyone here really ever done that? Called in an acoustician? Is that even the right profession? I only find hearing aids on Google. What exactly does he do, what does it cost? Does he really measure what resonates and how? Here they only wanted 800 euros just to measure if it's loud, and that’s useless because I can measure that just as well with the phone... How do you come to the conclusion that the acoustician will tell you what is causing it to be loud? What he does, you can do yourself, right? You can hear yourself whether the sound comes through your wall or the windows? And you can also google your wall structure and your windows and see what sound insulation value they have. If the wall for example has 40 dB and the window 32 dB, replacing the window will most likely help...