Putting up a stud wall inside a large room in your home is much cheaper and easier option to create more space within your house, without moving. By splitting a room in two with new walls, an en-suite bathroom or home office could be created within the home.
Building a stud wall
A stud wall is made up of a timber frame secured to the ceiling and floor. Sound and heat insulation must be installed, which can be added through slab insulation between the two sides of the wall. Door frames can easily be added to the stud wall, due to them not being weight bearing structures. The frame is filled in with timber studs and noggins. The stud wall can also house cables, but all cables must be positioned before the wall is closed off. Finally, once the inner structure of the wall is finished, plasterboard must be attached to the outer frame. Acoustic check plasterboard is available for those who want slightly more sound insulation.
Additions to the stud wall
Stronger types of plasterboard are an option for those who don’t have a low budget when building new walls. Installing this type of plasterboard over a normal thickness may benefit a family home with younger children or dogs, to reduce the risk of damage to the wall. To increase the strength of the wall even more, two layers of plasterboard can be installed instead of one. This type of structure would give the wall a much more robust feel and sound less hollow when knocked.
Sound absorbing fill is another popular noise reducing method when building stud walls. This type of insulation reduces the ability of the wall to equalise temperatures between each room. Filling the cavity within the wall with fibre glass deadens sound and gives more fire resistance, increasing safety. Another way to increase fire safety is to use fireproof plasterboard when building the new walls.
Alternative materials
Metal framing can be used to construct a stud wall, instead of a timber frame. Hollow concrete blocks and breeze blocks used to be more common medium weight building options. Strawboard is a low cost, thin wall with goof sound insulation, but is not very strong. Finally, a heavyweight option for a stud wall is using poured concrete. This type of wall is usually built on concrete floors and is unsuitable for construction on a ceiling or floor woodwork, due to the weight.