Terrbile noise from upstairs

rmiller

My husband and I have been living in our bought flat for 5 years now. It's a big old house which has been converted into flats. The issue is the guy upstairs now has a woman and child living there. The noise from them jumping up and down, walking around and slamming doors is getting unbearable!!!! We've asked them nicely to try and step lightly and got a cold response. They are renting.

What can we do? Do we contact the landlord and asking for carpets in the flat?

HELP PLEASE! NEED SLEEP!

Sublime_2

Unfortunately theres not a lot you can do about it, unless the landlord agrees to put carpets, with underlay down.

The people upstairs are probably just walking about normally, but without carpets, it probably sounds like you've got a herd of elephants walking around. Its probably unrealistic to expect them to tiptoe around in their own home though.

Hope you get something sorted with your landlord, as I know how noisy converted flats can be.

Jenniefour

Are you an owner? If so, check your lease - in some leases there are clauses about floor coverings - and if yours has a clause that specifies carpets and underlay then it can be enforced.

I would definitely contact the landlord anyway - and get him to come around so he can hear for himself. Ask him if he is willing to lay carpets with thick underlay - or if the lease specifies that there needs to be carpets and underlay then you can draw his attention to it. Might even be worth offering something towards the cost if this would help solve the problem.

Conversions, unfortunately, are notorious for sound transmission, especially in ground floor flats, even when the leases requires carpets and underlay, having lived in one before - never again!

[Deleted User]

My four year old (he's tiny) definitely sounds like a herd of elephants when he's walking/running around upstairs and we have laminate flooring. It doesn't take much to make this kind of disturbance, I'm afraid. Rugs.., like carpets definitely helps reduce the noise. I bought a huge very good quality Next one for £12 on ebay

geoffky

we had some terrbiles in our house and it took ages to get rid of them...good luck

DizzyDasher

We actually had this problem with our downstairs neighbours - i.e. we were the noisy neighbours! We were mortified ... we always took shoes off inside so had assumed that because we couldn't hear ourselves walk the people downtairs also wouldn't be able to hear - but apparently these things can amplify through the floor.

We had been living there around a year and a half with no problems, and they had moved in about 2 months before they said anything to us, so unfortunately the first we knew there was a problem was when she came upstairs and started yelling at me at my front door at 11pm on a Saturday night when I had friends over for dinner, and therefore had been walking to and fro a lot with plates etc. Quite embarrasing for me and my guests and not the best way to get us in the mood where we wanted to help out, so sounds like you have already started off much better! By the next day she had already complained to the building management and my landlady, so much hullaballoo all round before we had any chance to do anything about it.

Being a tenant in that situation is quite tricky as you don't have much information about flooring, can't carpet, probably don't want to invest in lots of expensive rugs if you're not necessarily going to be there very long, etc...

Anyway, after they and I had calmed down we dropped them a note to see if there was anything we could do. We already didn't wear shoes in the flat but we offered to try slippers, and to come down and listen through the floor while one of us did some test-walking-about upstairs to see if we could figure out what was having the biggest impact. Mr Downstairs popped up for a chat which was much more friendly, but they didn't take us up on our offer to go down and listen, or let us know whether the slippers were doing any good or not. So after a while having heard nothing more we abandoned the slippers (a bit of a pain).

I saw Mrs Downstairs on a tube about a month after that and asked her how the noise was and whether it was still a problem, and she said they never heard us at all any more (would have been nice if they'd let us know given they had involved all and sundry third parties, but talking to other people rather than us did seem to be their general way of handling things)...

This was quite funny as essentially nothing had changed - but I think 2 things did change:
1) They met us and could see we were not monsters and were trying to be helpful, and
2) It had never really occurred to us before how much the sound might travel (we never lived somewhere with wood floors right above a neighbour before), so we probably do subconsciously walk around more softly than we did before.

Not really sure what the moral of the story is, except to say that actually knowing the people making the noise a little bit might help because (a) if you can put a personality to the noise it might seem less aggravating and (b) if they can put a personality to the downstairs neighbour they might subconsiously be more aware of your problem and walk a bit more gently... Nowadays we quite often see each other in the lift or on the bus and things are quite friendly (although in fact we are moving out, partly because the whole thing just made us feel less at home ... so I hope the new tenants don't have the same problem!)

Maybe you could drop them a note explaining that the noise seems to be amplifying through the floor and suggest doing some experiments where one of them comes down and is on the phone to the one upstairs, to see if there is anthing easy they can do that makes a difference? E.g. maybe just putting a small cushion in the door to stop it slamming and wearing slippers might make a big difference? And that way you would get to know each other a little bit too (you could combine it with tea and cake as a bit of an incentive?) I think most people want to solve these problems, but often the whole thing is so awkward it's easy for everybody just to keep their distance and feel aggrieved...

evoke

I currently have this problem with the single mum and her young child living in the flat above mine. I left her a very polite note just mentioning the alarming noise that has spoilt my sleep for the last two months (ever since she moved into the flat - she's an owner occupier and previously had let the flat out). Her child runs around the flat all day long. She wakes up at 5.00am on Saturday and Sunday and walks very heavy-footed so I have the pleasure of being woken up at 5.00am at weekends!

She just crumpled up my note and posted it back into my letterbox.

On some days I work from home but I often sturggle to think clearly because of the heavy footfall and slamming of doors. Often the noise is louder than my radio!

I can't formally complain to the management company or landlord for the block as it'll become an issue since i'm trying to sell my flat at the moment.

So, other than get even, there's not a lot you can do about neghbours from hell who, as far as they are concerned, are just behaving normally.

Getting even has crossed my mind many times. I've thought about striking the doorframes with a rubber mallet at 4.00am but i'm worried that this might disturb the people living in the flat below mine and I wouldn't want to do that.

suburbanwifey

God, this brings back bad memories. I had this issue many years ago in a flat I bought.

When I bought it, an old lady (very sweet) lived upstairs in her flat that was owned...she was silent and never caused any problems, apart from sometimes having her TV on a bit loud at night as she was a bit deaf, but I countered that by turning my TV out to drown out what she was watching.

Then the nightmare began! She got put in an old people's home and her flat was sold to 2 lads in their 20's (mummy's had bought it for them) and within days my life was a living nightmare.

Up to 7 or 8 guys tramping up the stairs outside my flat at all hours of the day and night and the one time I complained nicely, they stamped all the harder.

Parties? You've no idea! Drunken loud binges where the flat was full of men and women screeching, playing LOUD music, scrapping, you name it.

I called Environmental Health. They came out with a noise monitor...guess what, that night they were quiet. I didn't get any sleep for almost 8 months and then I snapped.

I started setting my alarm for 5am (they were usually asleep by then, they were all students) and I would hoover my entire flat with a huge Henry that made a helluva lot of noise.

They reacted by making more noise. I then hoovered longer and more loudly under their bedrooms, then I started banging on the ceiling with my sweeping brush (lol) and I woke them up.

It was getting nasty by this stage and I had called the Police a few times who 'warned' them but they had not actually broke the law..until one of them came downstairs to complain at me and went through the process of 'arresting' me, he read me my rights and told me he was actually a Police Officer.....I reported him for arresting me and impersonating a Police Officer, he got done

It didn't end there.

Their toilet started leaking and water was dripping down from their overflow onto the floor outside my ground floor flat back door. I phoned the council and reported it as dangerous, I could slip, fall etc.

Council came to have a look and agreed, they were ordered to repair the faulty toilet. They ignored it and laughed in my face.

That winter it froze badly. I got up one morning and went outside to the bin and fell on the water that had dripped from their toilet tank onto the ground and broke my wrist.

I was in plaster for 6 weeks and could do nothing as it was my right hand.

I then sued the council as they had failed to get them to correct the problem. I won thousands. They settled out of court.

The good news? the lads then got sued by the council, for noise pollution and for the full cost of my claim. They were sued for many many thousands.

The Sh*ts moved out a week later and sold the flat. Peace reigned until the day a short while later that I sold up and moved out and bought a house.

Never would I live in a flat again.

But, revenge did come my way, even though I had to suffer the pain of a broken wrist, it was worth it to have them sued for thousands by a council that had not acted on all my complaints, so I sued them instead!

It's amazing how they stand up and listen finally when you sue them.

My sympathies to you, get out and move if you can...

Flibertigibit

I am currently in a ground floor flat and luckily appear to have a mouse living above me - he's in fact a 6ft chap, but honestly I've never heard a squeak out of him in the 3 years I've been here! Now I am moving to a first floor sheltered flat and have been told that the lady under me is deaf, so hopefully I won't disturb her.

But yes, today I realised how noise upstairs can be amplified downstairs - I was in the dining room in my daughter's house and could hear these noises upstairs in what is the bathroom - turned out it was her tiny kitten scampering about and she must weigh less than a kilo!

berkshirelady

oooh this brings back some memories! I live downstairs in a converted semi and we had an absolute nightmare with the upstairs neighbours. We'd been told by the agent that the woman upstairs was a professional living on her own, and v quiet. all well and good, until she started secretly moving her rellies in. 3 months later there were three adults and a dog all bunked up in a 1 bed studio flat, and the noise was horrendous. They were also sneaking out at night and letting the dog sh*t in ours and the neighbours' gardens. We tried asking them to keep the noise down, and control the dog, but things got malicious very quickly!

so we reported it to the letting agent, who told us that it would be easier & quicker to let the tenancy lapse, rather than issue eviction proceedings. In the meantime we got help from environmental health, and kept a noise diary, which quickly showed we were suffering excessive noise almost 24 hours per day. Screaming, shouting, slamming doors, etc. One of them didn't work and would sit up all night getting drunk and falling about all over the place! Somehow they got wind that the council was involved and things got really nasty. The drunk one would wait for me on street corners and start threatening me, so in the end we got the police involved. The police and the council were really helpful, but in the end we had to sit it out and wait for them to leave. When they left, the police said there might be reprisals, and they advised us to steer clear, so we stayed with a friend for a few days until the police told us they'd gone.

I really wanted to move out, but we'd only just moved in ourselves and couldn't afford to move again. Luckily for us, I suppose, the landlord had a good reason for not renewing their tenancy because she was clearly in breach of tenancy by moving in other adults who were not on the agreement, by having a pet in the property,and being antisocial to us and other neighbours with the doggy do on the gardens.

In your case, unless your neighbour is doing stuff that could be seen to be unreasonable, e.g. loud music late at night, etc, then sound insulation under the floor is probably the best bet. Our new neighbours upstairs can be noisy at times, and they get up far too early at the weekends for my liking, but they're nice people and I know they're not doing anything on purpose; they don't have loud parties and I know from past experience, it could be a lot worse.

I've found that wearing earplugs in bed can really help to screen out some of the noise, might be worth a try. I would also argue that if you've spoken to them about constant door slamming and they're still doing it, and being cold with you, then you have a right to contact their landlord about it. There's not much that can be done about small children running about, but door slamming isn't necessary.

good luck, I hope you work it out :-)

danielwhitehouse

You know what some people do in these situations in make friends with the people. If you anger them, it's just going to make it worse. I'd maybe invite them round for dinner or something and say that they know someone, who knows someone who has a neighbour who makes a load of noise. Expand on the story so it puts them right in the position of where you are now. They may than get the hint. If all else fails, then call the landlord or council for noise pollution.