There has always been a good deal of annoyance when it comes to living in a cheaply built government flat where all you hear is people arguing next door, hear people dancing in their flat but guess what! They live on the top floor and on the other side of the landing, TV blasting from the next room when your trying to sleep and the neighbours upstairs complaining about “you” having a shower at 12:00 am! So what if I get home late and need to have a shower before heading off to bed and more so it’s worse when they start to make noises on purpose to try and “Prove a point” .God help me when she has her TWINS in April.So to soundproof a room (To finally shut the neighbours out), it is of great interest to people who live in a loud estate alike, need to know how to do controlling reverberation within a room. The two functions require quite different techniques and “know your budget”, and in some cases could even conflict.For sound vibrations to travel, there must be a medium (in space, as the cliché has it, no one hears you scream). A vacuum, therefore cannot transmit sound. We know that air transmits sound with reasonable effectiveness, and because of its low mass it does so over a large band of frequencies. I am even thinking of collecting all my egg cartons to fit on my walls hahaha Even so, it has limitations, being less effective at high frequencies than at lower frequencies. This is the reason that a loudspeaker placed far from you will seem high, and that the voice of someone shouting at you from a long way off will seem muffled. A very good way to reduce some sound in your room is filling it up with wardrobes and a carpet would somewhat reduce some impact. All solid objects encountered in your room will have much more mass than the air. This means that there will be less efficient at conveying vibrations with short wavelengths. So… if you hear your neighbours stereo system or TV, the offending sound will seem to be composed almost entirely of very low frequencies.

1. Soundproofing is not a problem at high frequencies, but only at lower frequencies, and:
2. Sound will not be transmitted from one space to another unless there is a continuous transmission medium from one space to the other.

So in nearly all cases the transmitting medium will not be air (unless there is literally a hole in the wall) but some more massive matter, such as wood, drywall, etc. Such materials are very efficient conductors of long wavelength vibrations, and this is why most walls and floors cannot be considered soundproof. It appears evident that what we must do is find a way to interrupt the path of the vibrations. There are techniques for doing this i.e.: the egg carton (cheap way) Important though walls are, floors are even more problematic in soundproofing, for reasons that are evident. Noise sources we wish to guard against are often in direct contact with the floor. Footsteps are the obvious example.Once again it much depends on whether you wish to keep sound in or keep it out. In most cases, the floor carries a great deal of acoustical energy, and once vibration has entered the building structure there is really no way to keep it from propagating. It is best, therefore, to keep the energy out of the floor in the first place. I will just place rugs instead of carpets since it’s very hot in my flat in summer and cheaper.

First of all never get the first name you see. A background check is essential. Unlike me, I phoned a carpenter simply because my mother had a flyer mailed to her house and she told me “oh phone them, they must be cheap” and so I did. I needed a carpenter so I would have nice wooden flooring. The guy seemed to be professional but on some decisions would start preaching to me, which was kind of strange. Then I realised he was a Jehovah’s Witness. He runs his business from Spain in La Linea De La Conception the company is called Parque Plass. The owner is Jose Torres. He used his 3 brothers to work in my house. Jose Torres recommended a kitchen company also situated in Spain in La Linea De La Conception. The kitchen company is called Bricolaje Cruz. The flooring company owned by Jose Torres did a terrible job in my flat. The skirting where placed on top of the other skirting and they took 2 weeks to almost finish the flooring. Gosh I have so much to complain about this company. They would come every day, and every evening I would get home to find dirty knives left on the windowsill and empty packets of crisps and empty juice cartons which were bought for my daughter for school! I don’t know what made me angrier, the fact that they couldn’t wash after themselves or the fact that they were helping themselves to anything they wanted without asking me. The final straw was when I came home to find my brand new kitchen cabinet doors taken off and loads of things including personal paper work and a brand new lap top STOLEN. I made a report to the Royal Gibraltar Police. They came to my house to get a statement off me, then I headed off to the Police station in Spain. The Spanish Police told me they couldn’t help me since the criminal offence was in Gibraltar. They informed me that they could have taken some action if the Royal Gibraltar Police sent them a fax with a request to do so. The Royal Gibraltar Police didn’t help me out since they seem to sit on their bums all day or order takeaways and grow a belly.

This is just a warning for all those innocent people who want to look for a carpenter. Please do RESEARCH when looking for a qualified, well respected company. And this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way. Never hire a Citizen that doesn’t live in the same country from where you presently live and remember, “They are just a bunch of Cowboys”.