Walking noise

G_M

gomer wrote: »

For a start you should use the 'block' button in your email. Then just live your life normally & don't allow her to bully you into tip toeing about. Tell her to make a noise complaint to environmental health & not bother you again.

That's certainly one option.

But not what I'd recommend.

Partly because it's just not neighbourly, and the neighbour might be genuinely suffering.

And partly because they are joint freeholders. That means they are going to have to cooperate over things in the future eg a roof repair where the rain is coming in to the top flat but the downstairs neighbour does not care and simply "uses the 'block' button in their email. Then just lives their life normally & doesn't allow you to bully them into paying half the repair cost......"


Or even refuses to allow the repair to be undertaken at all.

arciere

G_M wrote: »

There may be some industry standard for sound insulation - do some googling. But the fact that the noise is carrying certainly suggests inadequate insulation.

But irrespective of the lease, and just in terms of being neighbourly, I'd buy cheap rugs to put down and always remove shoes indoors (if you don't already).

Have you been down yourself to experience the noise ie with you partner/a friend walking around?

It's a common problem and frankly living in a flat where noise carries downwards can be hugely annoying.It's one of the downsides of close living esp in poorly insulated buildings......

Thanks.
There is actually a very long story behind our relationship with them. Trying to be brief, we had a row over the front garden (shared), they decided to cut all the plants we had there despite us telling them not to touch them, or to at least replace them with something else to avoid having a destroyed garden. We tried to be as polite as possible, we asked them on several occasions to come upstairs and discuss any matter over a cup of coffee, but we eventually gave up (we have been living there for the past 2 years and we have no clue what the lady's voice sounds like, she avoids us at all costs and if she needs to leave the flat and we are outside, she just waits behind the door until we're gone). They have frequent arguments in the middle of the night, door slamming that wakes us, our flat gets inundated with cooking smell when they fry and refuse to open the window in the kitchen because it is 'too cold' or because she is scared of spiders .
We have a small dehumidifier that we don't use in some rooms because they can 'hear the vibration'. We've told them to let us know if they sleep Saturdays or Sundays morning (he works night shifts) to avoid running the washing machine or hoovering. We've let them pour ants powder in our own (private) garden because they saw ants in one of their rooms.

So yeah, I have actually given up on having a good relation with them, I would only like to be on the 'safe side' should they decide to take it further.

We would like not to spend any money on flooring at the moment as we have many other priorities, but I wanted to see where we stand on this, if they do decide to take it further.

AlexMac

In order to answer the question ...

arciere wrote: »

...is there anything that they could potentially do about this? I mean, is it just a case of 'this is the house we both purchased, so live with it' or can they take any action against us if they decided to?

...you'd need someone more legally well-informed (like G_M?) to advise on

- whether your neighbour has a hope in hell of succeeding in any formal action against you;

- for example by trying to get you for breach of lease conditions (which could be nigh on impossible if it's a "shared freehold" and only infinitesimally more likely if there's a third party freeholder), or

by appealing to the local Council EHO on noise nuisance grounds.

In my view they'd be wasting their time. Neither case would prove fruitful for them.

In other words, it's really down to negotiation and good neighbourly communication; both of which seem to be in short supply according to your description of the neighbours' attitude.

But you could try; ideas in the posts above, maybe writing them a reasoned letter explaining
- that your floor has, to the best of your knowledge, been properly installed with a sound-deadening layer under the engineered wood;
-that you already do take, and will continue to take all reasonable steps to keep noise down; tread lightly, keep tv/music volumes down, vacuum floors at reasonable times, blah, blah...

-maybe inviting her or her partner to pop in and walk about normally while the other listens in?

- maybe even buying rugs?

But having lived in a conversion flat in a mid 19th Century property, I know from experience that it's near impossible to solve this. Only mass deadens sound; near impossible to effectively soundproof a suspended timber floor with a wooden sub-floor over joists and a shallow, hollow, acoustically-amplifying gap to the ceiling plaster boarding below. Like a giant guitar or cello!

We lived in a similar lower level flat and experienced the problem both ways. One resident above was incredibly heavy-footed; she used to pound noisily across her carpeted bedroom floor and set the lights swinging (luckily above our living room, rather than our bedroom).

Her sucessor however was the opposite; quiet as a mouse but very sensitive to our noise; she'd go to bed early and claim to hear our TV below, even when this was at a very low level. She's get her husband to ring us; and you could feel him squirming as he did this. We got used to watching even British TV on sub titles!

So that's a long winded way of saying that all you can hope to do is improve the relationship- whcih might be impossible. So they might learn to live with it- as might you.

gomer

G_M wrote: »

That's certainly one option.

But not what I'd recommend.

Partly because it's just not neighbourly, and the neighbour might be genuinely suffering.

And partly because they are joint freeholders. That means they are going to have to cooperate over things in the future eg a roof repair where the rain is coming in to the top flat but the downstairs neighbour does not care and simply "uses the 'block' button in their email. Then just lives their life normally & doesn't allow you to bully them into paying half the repair cost......"


Or even refuses to allow the repair to be undertaken at all.

From what i am reading the relationship is already way beyond pleasantries.

arciere

AlexMac wrote: »

But you could try; ideas in the posts above, maybe writing them a reasoned letter explaining
- that your floor has, to the best of your knowledge, been properly installed with a sound-deadening layer under the engineered wood;
-that you already do take, and will continue to take all reasonable steps to keep noise down; tread lightly, keep tv/music volumes down, vacuum floors at reasonable times, blah, blah...

-maybe inviting her or her partner to pop in and walk about normally while the other listens in?

- maybe even buying rugs?

Thanks, that's actually more or less what I wrote in the email I sent them. i would copy&paste it here but that probably wouldn't be a good idea:j
In short, I have told them that we have insulated underlay (actually, some rooms have underlay that is normally used for carpets (we have been told), which is thicker than normal), I have asked them to come upstairs and start to walk as 'lightly' as possible to see how much noise they manage to make, we are back at home at 6pm and go to bed no later than 11pm, we have a projector in the bedroom that doesn't have a speaker, so we must use earphones all the time, no music whatsoever, only hoover late morning or afternoon on the weekend...

gomer

arciere wrote: »

Thanks, that's actually more or less what I wrote in the email I sent them. i would copy&paste it here but that probably wouldn't be a good idea:j
In short, I have told them that we have insulated underlay (actually, some rooms have underlay that is normally used for carpets (we have been told), which is thicker than normal), I have asked them to come upstairs and start to walk as 'lightly' as possible to see how much noise they manage to make, we are back at home at 6pm and go to bed no later than 11pm, we have a projector in the bedroom that doesn't have a speaker, so we must use earphones all the time, no music whatsoever, only hoover late morning or afternoon on the weekend...

It this your own home or a borstall they have you living in?

arciere

davidmcn wrote: »

The fact it's bad enough for them to be complaining about the noise certainly suggests it isn't properly insulated. Have you gone downstairs to check what it actually sounds like?

I haven't, mainly because I wouldn't be allowed.
The thing worth mentioning is that they destroyed the front garden (they cut trees, flowers and plants) because she is scared of insects (bees, flies, ants, spiders) and thought that by doing that she would solve the problem. Needless to say, no plants have been replaced and now the front garden looks like a war zone.

So I would really really avoid spending any money on this unless I really need to, because I am sure that we will never get the soundproofing she's dreaming of.

By the way, all the complaints have always come from her, never from him.

princeofpounds

We seem to have a had a run of these noise threads on the boards.

The history with your neighbour is unfortunate. But it's not especially relevant to the moralities of the situation. A few points are relevant, some of which are repeated from above:

- The noise may genuinely be horrific downstairs. It may even be a major contributor to your bad relationship. So it would not be correct to dismiss the comment out of hand, even though it's also possible it's just an unreasonable complaint.

- I (and many others on the board) have lived in flats with wood flooring upstairs, sometimes in breach of lease, sometimes not. I can tell you from experience it can be very bad, even if the cause of the noise is not in itself unreasonable. It's not only the noise itself, but also the 'water torture' element to it - you don't know when it's going to start, you don't know how long it will last, it can be very frequent, and you can't control it.

- The fact that you can hear them would indicate that there is a good chance it's a real problem. The sound transmission is often much worse going down than going up because it conducts directly through the floorboards into the ceiling which can like a loudspeaker, rather than passing through metres of air beforehand and reflecting from the ceiling (in layman's terms).

- It doesn't matter who installed the flooring first. You are responsible for it now.

- There are no legal grounds for noise nuisance complaint if the noise you are making in your own home are the product of normal and reasonable living activities. Walking is definitely one of these things. So the council, environmental health, police etc. will have nothing to do with this, except maybe having a polite word if roped in.

- The only other ground they can legally challenge you on is breach of the lease, as mentioned. The term in your lease that you sort-of-quote (have you really been accurate?) appears very vague, as who defines 'properly insulated'?. It would be a long process (not least because you share the freehold) and involve significant legal costs. I don't think anyone can give you a clear idea of how it would turn out. But I think it would be a pain, for both parties involved.

- Your 'sound reduction underlay' is highly unlikely to be effective. It's as much a marketing term than anything else, although it will have a very modest effect. The main benefit of it from the noise perspective is that it stops the 'clacking' sound of having no underlay at all. Proper sound insulation is much more significant. Proper construction for sound insulation goes even further (as it accounts for noise transmission through structures other than the main flat surfaces), but retrofitting that isn't at all easy.

- So what are your choices? You can ignore the complaint - your neighbours will hate you but it's unlikely to be a big deal otherwise unless they do try the legal route, in which case you'll need your own advice.

Or you can totally reconstruct the floor of your flat, which may be unreasonably expensive. Given that area is probably demised to the freeholder, you might negotiate to split costs if you ever wanted to do that.

Or you can lay rugs or even carpet, which is likely to improve the situation significantly for a much more reasonable cost.

You probably have very little legal obligation here. You might have a moral obligation, but it's hard to judge that from a complaint from someone you don't like. A good place to start, if you were on normal terms, would be to go downstairs and listen to what the noises actually sound like. It's up to you if you want to go down that route.

But what you definitely don't have to do is apologise for walking around in your own home at any time. The walking isn't the problem here. The floor may be. And/or the neighbours

PS Really stop obsessing about what they did for the front garden. That may be a fair grudge, but it is a grudge.

GDB2222

I wouldn't want to defend an action about your floor being " properly
sound insulated " as the lease requires. The fact your footsteps are causing a nuisance indicates that the insulation is insufficient.

There are things you can do that cost nothing/very little and would help the situation:

Take your shoes off. I normally walk around my home in socks or barefoot. If you need something on your feet, then soft slippers are hardly a big expense.

Get some rugs - they are not very expensive and make a big difference.

I installed carpet in a flat because of complaints about the noise from our parquet from the people below. Annoying, but sometimes you just have to do these things.

G_M

gomer wrote: »

From what i am reading the relationship is already way beyond pleasantries.

Yes - that has now become apparant.

I now recall the earlier thread about the garden - but that's why starting a new thread is so annoying: continuing that 1st thread would have provided immediate background rather than us having no idea of the previos history and state of relations.....
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5997978/issue-with-shared-front-garden



Did you get the insurance sorted?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76155540#Comment_76155540