The layout of your house & its effect on neighbour relations?

JustAnotherSaver

We bought our house with the intention of never moving. We were adamant.


5 years can change things...


I came from a detached house. A true detached house in that it was away from other houses & not just separated by about 10mm. My wife came from an end of terrace house but i guess importantly - where the staircases meet.


As a result (& looking back on it rather stupidly) we never paid the layout of the house as first time buyers any mind. Only once our neighbours started to play music quite loudly at 3-4am on a Friday & Saturday did it become obvious that we had a problem. You can't hear the noise at the back of the house which made me think - if our staircases met instead of the bedrooms/living rooms then would we even have an issue?




Of course you can have other types of nuisances. Shouting in the street in the early hours. Cars revving or whatever other noise.



But for those of you whos living rooms & bedrooms are well separated & its your staircases & maybe bathroom that meet - do you have an issue with noise from your neighbours?



Just wondering if that layout would improve things for us. We live in a semi detached by the way.

hollydays

Never thought about it.
Is this more of a problem in urban areas?

elsien

I have had noise issues with the neighbour on one side. Layout had nothing to do with it though - I'd have heard their sodding c(rap) music however the house was set out, given the volume.
Otherwise, I use my front room as the main room and the terraces on either side use their back rooms and we don't hear each other as a rule.

The one time the neighbours had music in the bedroom at stupid o'clock which woke me up I rather passive aggressively put my radio next to the wall when they were trying to have a lie in. Did the trick - I think they'd honestly not realised how much it travelled.

System

Only time I hear my neighbour is when the football is on.

tempus_fugit

Yes! Our first semi had staircases by the party wall and we heard very little, but the next house had living rooms and bedrooms by the common wall. We had a lot of problems with noise there as you could hear their TV and stereo (yes it was back in those days ), and in the bedrooms you could hear them talking in their living room. We've been detached since then though, it's really the only way.

Frith

Tiny extremely rural end of terrace here.

Someone years ago built another wall downstairs - presumably to soundproof between us and the neighbours!!!8217;. It!!!8217;s proper brick in front of the original brick with horsehair and lime plaster.

No double wall upstairs (sons!!!8217; room) and the neighbours!!!8217; bathroom is adjoining. We can hear everything they say and do in there. :-/ Even the ping of the light switch, floor boards, using the loo and the flush!

Pollycat

Is it a relatively new house?

I lived in terraced houses as a child but old, solid ones and can't recollect any noise.

My first house was a Victorian semi - no noise issue (and one set of neighbours were quite noisy shouting-wise, we could hear them in the garden but not in the house).

Then lived in a detached house. No noise issue.

seven-day-weekend

My bungalow is joined at the bedrooms. Living room and kitchen on the outside walls. No noise. Having said that , we are in our late 60s/ early 70s.

Rambosmum

We also didn't pay it mind when buying our first house - we were living room to living room with our semi-detached neighbours. It was ok, we could occasionally here the kids shouting or the TV if it was loud and we were quite, but I think the construction of the house is more important.


We currently live in a fake end terrace - our house was built as a detached, 15 years before the neighbouring row of terraces, which is built up to and touching ours (you can get a piece of paper between the walls or you could when they were built 100+ years ago!) We are living room to living room with the neighbour but never hear the TV or the 3 kids, including the baby crying. Randomly we do occasionally here them walking up and down stairs - despite the stairs being on the opposite side of the house! And you can only hear that in one room of our house.

Fosterdog

I'm mid terrace but in a house with solid stone walls. The houses are a mirror image layout so on one side we have stairs to stairs and on the other we have living room to living room. We very rarely hear anything from either, on the stairs side is an elderly gent who is a but hard of hearing so he has his phone on max volume so we sometimes hear that ringing but not even once a week. On the other side despite having a child and a yappy barking dog we only ever really hear either of them when the windows are open, we can sometimes if we have no radio or tv on hear the dog but it is a very faint noise and not enough to bother us at all.

maisie_cat

I have lived in a variety of house types and have only been aware of neighbour noise through the wall in the previous 2 to the one we are in now. We made detached a non negotiable when we moved as a result and we can't hear inside noise unless windows are open.
A detached doesn't protect you from the neighbours getting drunk and telling each how much they love each other very loudly in the garden!