Solid house or drywall construction?

Hello everyone,

we are currently still considering how to design the upper floor regarding non-load-bearing walls. The architect planned the entire upper floor with 12.5 cm drywall partitions (W112).

Now I have done some reading and am of the opinion that drywall can achieve significantly better sound insulation compared to a Poroton brick.

The external masonry for us will be built with a 36.5 T7 MW.

According to the pure data sheets, I understand that the simple construction panel reaches 53 dB and with "Silent Board" 66 dB. In comparison, the brick reaches 52 dB.

What do you think about this topic? How did you do it and what are your experiences regarding sound insulation?

The stud construction is directly on the raw floor and not on the screed

Drywall has other advantages. Think of plumbing..with solid walls you still need a pre-wall and that takes up valuable space. We have all "Sanitär" walls as drywall (exception exterior wall..there is no other way).

Regards, Steffen

Sound can be airborne noise or impact noise. A combination of material(s) and construction may be more favorable for one, but possibly not at the same time for the other. The preference of some planners for lightweight partition walls in the upper floor is more related to the cheaper construction of the sloping roof connections than to different physical qualities.

We have no sloping ceilings...

What are your experiences?

In our old house, the interior walls are drywall and we were very unhappy with it. It somehow sounds hollow, does not really contribute to phase shift (heat protection), and the sound insulation is basically zero. In addition, the connections to the exterior masonry are cracking.

Now your drywall is certainly much better. However, I would still emotionally prefer solid walls. Keep in mind that the plaster also significantly contributes to the surface weight and sound insulation. In the new building, we had all the walls on the upper floor embedded about 1.5 meters into the ring beam, from which I expect even less movement between the walls.

We have no sloping ceilings...

Then this approach of the planner singular in the upperfloor surprises me (?)

It somehow sounds hollow, does not really contribute to phase shift (heat protection), and the sound insulation is zero. In addition, the connections to the exterior masonry crack. [...] In the new building, we have had all walls on the upper floor integrated about 1.5 meters into the ring beam, from which I expect even less movement between the walls.

Drywall partitions are not only non-load-bearing, but also not stiffening. This is also a reason for their use under timber-framed structures or in skeleton construction (where they do not need to make such a contribution).

In my opinion, they are (for airborne sound) practically bass-reflex surface radiators. So not really sound-insulating in effect, but rather sound-shifting into a frequency range below the measurement window (100 to 3,150 Hz). And for impact noise even resonators.