Week 3 on The Block and the build crew did something we don't see every day: they turned a construction site into a nightclub. Strobe lights, a a dance floor, you name it. And the only reason the neighbours didn't hear a thing was a product most people are unaware of.
This week, we're stepping away from the usual room-by-room recap to give one product its own moment, because what it did on set deserves more than a passing mention.
First, a quick catch-up
The first two weeks were business as usual on the protection front.
Week 1, Guest Bedroom: limited floor protection. What you would have spotted was Protecta Site Mat XTRA rolled out externally, and if you looked closely, each of the five teams had a different colour underfoot. Site Mat XTRA comes in seven colours (green, orange, pink, blue, red, black and yellow), making it easy to tell at a glance whose walkway was whose across the block.
Week 2, Main Bathroom: once the room was finished, Protecta Shield Xtra went down over the newly installed tiles, tapware and fixtures. It's a self-adhesive shield applied after completion, there specifically to stop the last trades through the door from undoing all the work that got the room to "done."
Standard stuff. Good, reliable, dry-surface protection. Exactly what you'd expect from a construction site.
Then Week 3 turned the volume up. For house Four, the team asked for a temporary room to be built from scratch, one that could contain noise and allow for work to continue later into the evening without disrupting the surrounding neighbourhood. Surface protection wasn't the brief here. Noise control was the brief.
That's where Protecta Sound Noise Barrier came in, and it's a product we don't usually get to show off on a construction site. It is commonly used on jobs where noisy work needs to happen near occupied buildings without racking up out-of-hours penalty rates.
Here's what made that possible:
- Noise reduction up to 60 dBA, absorbing up to 90% of noise, so what happened inside stayed inside.
- Hook-and-loop joins between panels, creating a tight vertical seal so the "room" held together as one continuous wall rather than a series of gaps.
- Lightweight panels at 2000mm x 1300mm and just 6.3kg each, quick to hang and just as quick to pull down once the work was finished.
- Multiple eyelets rated to 280kg, so the panels could be fixed straight to temporary fencing, scaffolding or a frame built specifically to support.
- Self-draining and UV stabilised, so they hold up outdoors as well as they do indoors.
It's the same product real builders use every day to keep demolition and construction noise from becoming a neighbourhood dispute, just doing something a lot more fun with it this time. And a nice bit of overlap with the main build: the Main Bedroom and WIR had Protecta Board XTRA (Grey, 3mm, PBX223-GY) going down to protect the subfloor ahead of the wet areas still to come.
Protection isn't just about keeping surfaces clean until handover. Sometimes it's about keeping the peace, literally, between a construction site and everyone living around it. If Week 3 proved anything, it's that the right acoustic barrier can turn a noise complaint into a non-issue, whether you're running power tools on a Tuesday morning or a sound system on a Saturday night.
Protecta Sound Noise Barrier is available to buy or hire. If you've got a noisy phase of work coming up near occupied buildings, talk to your local Protecta Solution Specialist about which option suits your project.
Watch the special feature here: