An introduction to sound insulation performance in the development of container houses

In recent years, with the rapid growth of the construction industry, prefab houses have spread quickly across China, while container houses, as a later entrant, have developed more slowly. Although container houses are less popular than traditional prefab houses, their advantages are far greater. Today we focus on their sound insulation performance.

Anyone who has used a traditional prefab house knows that its sound insulation is not very good—voices and footsteps from the upper floor can still be heard below. That is mainly because the two floors are separated only by a thin wooden board: the wood has a strong resonance effect and sealing is poor, so sound insulation is naturally weak. This causes great inconvenience for both daily office work and workers’ living quarters.

Container houses have a completely different structure from traditional prefab houses. The first and second floors belong to separate box units. The floor of each independent unit is made of steel, cement, and ceramic tile, more than 20 cm thick. Compared with prefab houses, this structure naturally offers much better sound insulation. Moreover, apart from a cement ground floor, the upper floors of prefab houses are typically reused wooden boards, with weaker sealing and sound insulation.

As people’s understanding of container houses deepens, many of their advantages will gradually be recognized, and there is growing room for container-house development in China.