ᐅ Wastewater Pipe – How to Enclose and Insulate It?

Hello everyone,

We want to renovate our basement guest room / office ourselves, including wallpapering, painting, and installing laminate flooring.

So far, so good. However, I am a bit concerned about a soil pipe that will be located in a corner of the room, which we plan to cover ourselves.

What is the best way to build a cover around this pipe? I was thinking of using aluminum profiles with gypsum board, but I have no experience with this kind of work.

Another issue is sound insulation. Since the room will occasionally be used as a guest room, I want to minimize the noise from the wastewater as much as possible—how should I insulate the pipe?

Is it enough to simply place mineral wool between the pipe and the wall, or are there better methods?

The pipe will not carry large volumes of water; it is "only" the drain for the kitchen sink and dishwasher.

Regards,

Dirk

In our house, the wastewater pipe for two bathrooms runs through a corner of the living room. There are zero noise issues!

There are special "quiet" pipes designed to minimize sound, which are then mounted on the wall as decoupled as possible to reduce vibration noise. Our wastewater pipe was wrapped in two layers of pipe insulation (like a sleeve, similar to insulation used on hot water pipes). Around that, there is standard drywall construction.

We did not use mineral wool or similar insulation materials. But please don’t ask for the exact names of the materials used — we’re just glad that it works really well.

Hello Dirk,

"Nordanney" has already provided the correct answers; if I am not mistaken, the term he is looking for is SML pipe.

What initially makes me pause is:

Doc.Schnaggls schrieb:

we want to finish our guest room / office in the basement ourselves, meaning wallpapering, painting, and laying laminate flooring.

I assume the basement was constructed with waterproof concrete (WU concrete) elements in sandwich construction? And what about the exterior and the enclosing walls of the room? Is the insulation sufficient for a residential finish according to the builder’s specifications, or is it the usual setup for a utility basement? What about the floor? Screed with heating, possibly underfloor heating or radiators? Windows => residential windows/emergency escape route?

Regards, Bauexperte

There are suitable angle profiles: about 15 x 15 cm (or 20 x 20 cm) (6 x 6 inches or 8 x 8 inches), which are relatively lightweight and reinforced, usually with a type of square mesh fabric. Alternatively, you can cut them to size yourself, as shown here:
Just search for pipe cladding on Google and then go to images; you will see how the drain on the ground floor of our old house was clad.

Hello Dirk,
just as the building advice says: Don’t worry too much about it! In our kitchen, there is also a drain pipe running through the corner from the bathroom above. (It is an HT100 pipe. Toilet, bathtub, shower, washbasin, and washing machine noises travel through it.) We double-layered the drywall, insulated the pipe, added mineral wool, and used standard pipe clamps with rubber lining.
I wouldn’t claim that you hear nothing at all, but it’s very little. When the radio is on, I can’t hear anything.
Good luck

We completed all the drywall work ourselves, including covering pipes (super easy), full pre-wall constructions, and a T-shaped solution for the shower, toilet, and washbasin (not really difficult but very time-consuming), without much prior experience. The pre-wall installations were built using metal stud framing filled with insulation wool, 15mm OSB (⅝ inch), and 12.5mm moisture-resistant drywall boards. The pipe coverings were constructed with metal studs and single drywall boards without any insulation. I added edge insulation strips (the black foam tape used for impact sound decoupling) under the profile at the wall connection everywhere, just to be safe, though this probably wasn’t necessary for the simple pipe coverings.

If you have more than two left hands and the right tools (very important: a spirit level), it’s a piece of cake and even kind of fun.

By the way, three tile installers have already been on site and all praised the drywall work highly. So: go for it!

P.S.: You can also use 30x50mm (1¼x2 inch) battens, as long as you can accept slight warping. Otherwise, it doesn’t make the work any easier or much cheaper. So my tip: metal stud framing.

One more thing: definitely don’t use self-drilling Spax screws for metal studs—that’s the worst. Use regular phosphated screws (they’re matte black) with coarse threads and a strong drill driver. Phosphated screws are important because otherwise, the screw heads may become visible under the filler over time due to coating oxidation. Use the smaller 50mm (2 inch) profiles; nobody needs anything bigger, and the risk of bending when driving screws is higher with larger profiles. You can also insert a batten inside the profile to prevent bending when driving screws, but I’m not sure if the batten won’t warp over time.

Watch a few videos and get started.

Oh, and there are also prefabricated adhesive profiles available, but they’re ridiculously expensive.

Hope this helps!