DIYbanter - View Single Post - Help - advice sought on repairing hole made in neighbours ceiling

wrote:
We're doing a major rennovation of a large victorian property, and in
the first mishap in a few months, last night a foot went through the
neighbours ceiling.

The *neighbour's* ceiling? Is that next door, or downstairs?

1) squaring off the hole, putting new plasterboard for the hole,
applying new skim and painting. Not sure if this is feasible/advisable.

That's the cheapest and simplest way - no reason why it shouldn't look
as good as before if done properly. Is the existing ceiling plasterboard
though, or lath-and-plaster (which makes it a bit more awkward)? You
might want to check from above where the existing joints in the
plasterboard are, and if close to the damaged area, you could pull the
old stuff down as far as the old join (to avoid having two weak joins
relatively close together).

Is the existing ceiling finish just flat, plain, painted?

2) fitting new plasterboard under the entire existing ceiling, skim and
paint.

Could do, but can't see any benefit over (1) - certainly a lot more
expensive and slow. Would help sound insulation, if that's an issue as
you mention below?

3) a suspended ceiling. We had already looked at various sound
insulation options, and this may be an opportunity to deploy something,
but cost is an issue and this was obviously an unexpected event.

Need for sound insulation suggests a downstairs neighbour rather than
next door? Can you clarify as it's very relevant!

Reading already, one post suggested that putting new plasterboard under
the existing ceiling may not meet fire regs, although not all aspects
of work on the property need to meet current regs due to its age, but
I've not checked with our build control officer yet.

Can't see how adding an extra layer of pboard can make the fire regs
situation worse than it is. Yes there are standards, but they don't
need to be applied retrospectively to an old property (even if you might
want to do so for safety's sake).

If the neighbour is next door, that means you have adjoining roofspace,
which is certainly a no-no these days from a Building Regs viewpoint
(spread of fire); it also leaves your property vulnerable to burglary
via next door and could do with sorting I would have thought.

David