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We live in an apartment building. Our two bedrooms are directly above the building's garage door. The opening and closing of the garage door disrupts the peace at home and sleep of my family.

Since we do not have too much options on what can be done with the garage door for noise reduction, we are looking into sound proofing on our bedrooms floors.

There are three types of noises we hear when the garage door is in operation: - steady humming of garage door opener - metal clanking - a loud stud sound when the door has reached all the way up or down

The garage door opener is mounted to the concrete ceiling in the level below our bedroom (building's car garage). We measured the noise decidable in our bedroom using an iphone + app and observed these numbers in dB:

  • Evening time garage door is not in motion: ~42 dB
  • Garage door in motion at loudest: 74 dB
  • Garage door in motion average: 68 dB

We are looking for any technical advise on what can we do with our bedroom floors to reduce this noise.

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  • Do you own the apartment or are you allowed to make modifications inside? What is your budget for modifications? How open are the owners/association of the building to making modifications to the garage door?
    – diceless
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 4:20
  • The noise can be coming from a different number of sources. You have the physical noise of the unit. You also have noise induced from vibration of the unit. You also have noise from other moving parts like the tracks, hinges, springs and rollers. You need to find out what is the primary source of the noise first before we can recommend solutions.
    – diceless
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 4:25
  • We own the apartment and can modify the inside with apply for permits. We are open to the budget. We think the noise comes mainly from the door opener.
    – N. L.
    Commented Sep 20, 2015 at 1:23
  • There can be two different noises going on. One can be noises from the unit, best to tackle that with thick carpet pad and then a high pile carpet. The other can be vibration from the unit, which is then vibrating the floor, which is then making the sound. The carpet and pad will help with that as well, but doing some maintenance on the opener (making sure the gears and motor are greased) and adding some rubber grommets between the opener and the mounts will also help reduce the sound.
    – diceless
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 4:35

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Since you are renting you likely are limited in how extensive you modifications can be. I would first contact whoever is responsible for the buildings maintenance. It is possible the door just needs some maintenance. Lubrication of the chain and rollers along with the adjustment of the up and down stop points. You can ask if you can install thick carpet padding and thick carpet over the entire floor to dampen the noise.

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  • We do not have a lot of options to reduce noise on the garage door, but we can fully modify the apartment to reduce noise. Is the carpet padding a special type of noise reduction padding? Also is there any other method we can do with the floor other than padding, like floating floor (not sure if it exist)?
    – N. L.
    Commented Sep 20, 2015 at 1:26
  • The denser/heavier the pad the more sound it will block.
    – diceless
    Commented Sep 21, 2015 at 4:36
  • Or ask if you can install some form of resiliant mounting between the motor and the ceiling joists?
    – keshlam
    Commented Dec 16, 2015 at 14:49

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