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

spadoosh

Our bedroom and living room are on the party wall as is the neighbours.

We can hear them. I spent a few months thinking we had a bird stuck in the chimney until i found out the neighbour has a parrot. Theres an elderly lady who has the tv on pretty loud, i can pick out every word but then its drowned out if we have the tv on. They can definitely hear us too, the parrot barks like my dog (it also does a ringtone, think its samsungs).

I tend to hear most things but then can easily choose to block it out. Theres a cockerel 2 doors down, ill always hear it but never notice it.

onlyroz

I live in a 1930s end terrace and our living room is adjacent to our neighbours. We rarely hear any noise. I think modern houses have thinner walls so noise might be a bigger issue.

Pollycat

Fosterdog wrote: »

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.

Rambosmum wrote: »

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.

onlyroz wrote: »

I live in a 1930s end terrace and our living room is adjacent to our neighbours. We rarely hear any noise. I think modern houses have thinner walls so noise might be a bigger issue.

I really do this it's more about the construction (and possibly age) of the house rather than the layout of the house and how noisy your neighbours are.

NBLondon

Late Victorian semi - staircases on party wall. So no problems with that side. Because it was built in an offcut of land - the other side is actually the end of other people's gardens and we get more noise from them - particularly the "Good Life" type who built a chicken coop and tried to attach it to the wall of my house! I had a few firm words there....

PasturesNew

It's not just layout, it's construction and neighbours too.

I live in a modern house, timber framed. Most would say "OMG, noise".

My neighbours stairs are in their living room, against my living room wall, but as mine has a separate hallway their stairs are mostly against my hall wall. I usually have my living room/hall door open. My neighbours and the previous ones are "quiet people" and I never hear a sound from them.

On the other hand, the woman who lived next door when I bought this house said she "was in tears" the night they moved in due to the noise from this house. I am a quiet person, so she'd have never ever heard a thing from me.

Some people are noisy and run up and down stairs all day long, shouting to each other in the house, playing loud music, having the telly up. Some people are as quiet as church mice.

Because the noisy people never hear their quiet neighbours, they assume they can't be heard. They are used to living in a noisy environment, never hearing the blissful sound of quiet and silence, they think they're "normal"....

9 doors along there's one neighbour with a loud voice and I can hear every word said when she's on the telephone. On the other hand, my 2 doors down neighbour parked a monstrously large truck just 25' from my living room overnight and left between 7am and 7.30am and I never heard it start or leave.

Noise and different noises travel differently, depending on a variety of factors that can't be summed up in a simple: GOOD, BAD choice of layout.

pearl123

I'm live in an old mid terrace house. I hear just about everything either side of me. Including movement. One side is particularly bad and I'm often woken several times in the middle of the night by a screaming woman. Thankfully, they are moving soon.

pollypenny

I was brought up in a typical Rhondda terraced house - stone built. Never heard a sound from next year unless there was a deliberate knocking on the wall.

Daughter lives in a brick terrace. Luckily her neighbour is an ancient single woman, so rare music sounds.

clairec79

I live in an old (19th century) terrace, rarely hear the neighbours and if we do it's because all of us have got windows wide open

hazyjo

We're in an Edwardian halls-adjoining semi and rarely hear anything from next door - and he plays the trumpet! Our staircase, downstairs loo, bathroom and kitchen join theirs and we occasionally hear something faint but certainly not intrusive.


I'm still trying to remember we don't have neighbours the other side of the bedrooms and lounge!

Kit1

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

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


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.


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

You don't live next door to our inconsiderate neighbour do you?

We have lived in our semi for almost 20 years so have had all sorts of neighbours but the one we have now has to be the worst. He has been there almost two years and has played his music at full volume at the back of the house so he can hear it in his front garden, played it at night so loud he couldn't hear my OH banging on his front door, every Sunday night we had to listen to Heart Radio in every room in the house for weeks on end. For the moment I think he has got the message after neighbours either side of him complained. Now he has a fire chimera which he thinks is great for burning all his rubbish day and night - especially on these nice evenings when you have your windows open and it is right up against our fence.

Perhaps we too should think about moving :mad:

Sorry - rant over