Internal door grading - advice needed

[Smk80]

Hi there I am looking to replace our internal doors. The current ones are the standard 35mm thickness but they must be the cheapest doors as they feel so lightweight and the middle panel is so thin they offer very little sound insulation when doors are closed.

I'm going to be shopping around but is there a particular grading scale for doors I should be looking for (UK)? We don't want the heavy fire doors and we can't afford 'full' solid wood so just looking for mid-range that are more sturdier/robust?

Thanks

 

[Deleted member 174758]

AFAIK there is no grading system for door soundproofing performance so I think your best bet for soundproofing would be a solid chipboard core fire door (flush or with a designer facade) fitted with a drop seal at the bottom, however most FD30 (30 minute rated) doors are 44mm thick and the choice in 35mm thick FD30 doors is quite limited. After that the next choice would be solid wood doors, which at 35mm thick are really regarded as "mid-range", but they won't perform as well as a solid core fire door. If your existing doors are hung in door linings with planted on door stop laths you would be better off moving the stop laths and changing to 44mm solid doors, again with drop seals (as a lot of noise travels through that 10mm or so gap some builders leaveat the bottom of doors, not to mention draughts

BTW a lot of apartment builds are now on 44mm as the norm these days, partly for soundproofing proofing reasons because soundproofing proofing really requires mass and density

 

[cdbe]

We've got 35mm engineered oak (a dense chipboard core with oak veneer glued on). Pretty solid, around £100 upwards.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

How do you find them for soundproofing?

 

[gonch69]

There is a fair few solid core 35mm primed doors doors not solid wood on the market now most DIY outlets stock them but there prices do vary £60upwards

 

[cdbe]

How do you find them for soundproofing?

Haven't done any scientific analysis but certainly far better that the sapele cardboard crap we had before.