Neighbour noise (but not noisy neighbours)

Kynthia

When new neighbours moved into the semi attached to my parent's house they changed the flooring. From then on you could hear so much 'normal' household noise that you never could before. I think the fact they had hard floors that touched the walls changed how sound was transferred across.

Lord_Baltimore

I think, unfortunately, that you're going to have to move. Once noise becomes an issue for you, you just can't get it out of your head (as Kylie would say).

Noise can easily ruin your health even if it's 'unintended' noise. You wait until you hear The Hum, that will really drive you nuts.

A detached will be more expensive but it will be worth it for your sanity; once you have your own 4 walls you'll be ok and return to being the person you were before noise became the overriding priority.

Trust me, move.

the_insider

We're in a back to back and the bloke behind us has emphysema. So every 15 minutes or so he has a nice cough and spits into a bucket. 24/7. He also has the tv on so loud in his front room we can hear it from our bedroom, 3 floors up. Thankfully we're in the process of moving on.

FR_262

I can hear my neighbours closing their cupboard doors in the kitchen. I find it quite comforting to know somebody is close by.

However, when their son was a teenager he played his decks really loudly and it was boom boom boom from early evening, just as I put my sons to bed, until late at night, even when I repeatedly asked him not to.


Eventually I waited until he was having a lie-in and hacked off the artex in my bathroom. Guess what? He started banging on the wall

I kept going for a bit - long enough for him to be awake and livid, then stopped, then continued the next weekend. Eventually he did get the hint.

In the mid terraced house in which we used to live, we could hear next door through the bedroom wall. She'd just got a new bf and we could hear her moaning and groaning. This was very alarming for my young children who were woken up by the noise and asked 'What's Jack doing to Jenny?" I had to go round and have a word. It was very embarrassing.

browneyedbazzi

My house is end of terrace, built in the 1930s. My neighbours have two kids and a dog. We've only been in 6 weeks, but in that time I've never heard anything - and it's not that the neighbours are the quietest people on the planet either because the husband apologised over the fence a couple of weeks ago for all the shouting following an argument with their teenager. I hadn't heard any of it!

As others have said, unfortunately once noise becomes an issue often the only real solution is to move. You could try other things (there is sound insulation available that you can put up etc) but you'll constantly be listening for the 'noise problem' and so you will get more sensitive to it . It can have a huge impact on your health so if moving is an option then it may be worth doing.

towanda

If I could afford a detached place, I'd get one in a heartbeat. The house I grew up in was detached (built early 1980s) and we never got any neighbour noise at all, except for maybe once a year when one of the other houses had a party out in the garden. I've lived in flats since moving out due to budgetary constraints and some were fine, well insulated from noise etc, and some were nightmares. The place I'm living in now is a small mid-nineties block and it is TERRIBLE for insulation, I am constantly bombarded with noise from both sides and above. Talking, singing, coughing, walking, kitchen appliances, cupboard doors...and then the fun really starts when upstairs use their tumble drier at weird times of the night. I've also learned that Thursday night seems to be bass night! Needless to say I won't be a long term resident. I guess it's pretty hard to gauge the level of noise in a place until you move in, especially if you view it during the day time - the only thing I can suggest is try to view in the evening - if it's convenient for the current occupiers - when more residents are likely to be around, causing noise (or not).

jimbog

I grew up in a Victorian terrace in London - never heard anything next door.

I then moved to a smaller Victorian terrace out of town and was shocked by what I could hear from next door: coughing, what people were saying when speaking loudly, coughing , closing doors, love making (all stages) etc..It felt I was living with them. Oh, and the smells too...cooking, cigarettes..The strange thing was that the wall thicknes was 9" as was standard.
For a good few years the neighbours were nice and just getting on with their lives then eventually one side was rented out and the tenant from hell arrived. I put it up for sale and moved on (be careful about make complaints about the neighbours as you will have to declare them when you have to sell.

Now i'm in a (better built) Victorian terrace - and there's none of the above.

mumcoll

Our first house was a council semi and the lady next door was going through a divorce so played 'I Will Survive' endlessly for weeks! Our first bought house we could hear everything from next door, including them opening and closing their curtains (old brass curtain rails), washing up, weeing, snoring etc.


We moved to a detached house although we really were over stretching ourselves. Best thing we ever did, I just couldn't trust moving anywhere where we were likely to have next door noise ever again!

angelbob

I live in a year old semi-detached bungalow, it has very think walls, so much so it's very warm here too (which is good and cheaper bills) and I can't hear a thing from next door x

ging84

From living in various houses and flats and having neighbours come and go, the biggest difference is the neighbours, not the building.
You can have some neighbours you can hear shouting, stomping up and down stairs, slamming doors etc, and someone else can move into the same place, and you hear almost nothing.

I would say it is normal being able to hear some movement, such as people up and down stairs or external doors being opened and closed and occasionally the TV or some music. All this should generally be hard to hear unless in a silent room.
Anything beyond this is bad sound insulation or bad neighbours