Walking noise

Norman_Castle

arciere wrote: »

It is all engineered wood+underlay. Kitchen and bathroom are tiled.

A wood floor fitted on good underlay fitted as a floating floor not touching the sides should be reasonably quiet depending on your footwear. I've got a large kitchen and spend a lot of time in it cooking, washing up etc so move around a lot in there. Are your tiled floors the problem?
Try wearing crocs, they're quiet and warm on hard floors.

arciere

princeofpounds wrote: »

- 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'?.

That was actually a copy&paste from the lease. This was a new lease, the old owners purchased the freehold house and then converted it to flats, so they never worried about having a lease. So the lawyers just used a generic lease (I guess) that would adapt to most cases.

princeofpounds wrote: »

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.

I tried, I suggested that they could come upstairs and do some walking, to see if it is us or the house. Funnily enough they never said anything about the floor, they complained about our way of walking saying something like "please walk more lightly, I know you can do it because it has been quieter for some time". Obviously our 'way of walking' has not changed at all.

arciere

I forgot to mention that we are not wearing shoes, we have been doing that since day 1. We have soft slippers (which are actually better than walking on socks).

GDB2222

arciere wrote: »

I forgot to mention that we are not wearing shoes, we have been doing that since day 1. We have soft slippers (which are actually better than walking on socks).

I think it’s unlikely that you are doing anything wrong. Older buildings are very difficult to soundproof. When my old office was converted into flats, we put in a suspended extra ceiling purely for the sound proofing.

My son and his partner were living upstairs in our house in the room above ours. They sounded like they were clog dancing whenever they moved around!

I would hope that a few rugs would both look nice and reduce the noise.

GDB2222

By the way, do you know whether the downstairs flat has downlighters cut into the ceiling? They tend to let an awful lot of noise in. But that can be improved a bit. As an example
https://www.soundstop.co.uk/ZDLCOAC.php

arciere

G_M wrote: »

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

Sorry, I didn't think about continuing on that one, I should have re-titled it 'I love my neighbours'

G_M wrote: »

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

I did, eventually. It took quite a few days of telephone calls but got it in the end.

arciere

GDB2222 wrote: »

By the way, do you know whether the downstairs flat has downlighters cut into the ceiling? They tend to let an awful lot of noise in. But that can be improved a bit. As an example
https://www.soundstop.co.uk/ZDLCOAC.php

Yes, they do, and in an ideal situation I would make that suggestion. However, after what happened when I suggested they could use removable windows nets to block out spiders, instead of cutting all the vegetation around the house (I was basically told 'how dare you suggest this and that'), I'll keep it to myself.

GDB2222

You can keep it up your sleeve if they take it further, with EH for example.

Thrugelmir

Plenty of places offer carpet offcuts if money is tight.

princeofpounds

Having read some of the previous thread - yeah these people seem rather nuts. The noise could still be a real issue given what you say, so they haven’t been helping their cause by creating badwill around imaginary ones.

Certainly don’t even try to look like you are apologising for how you walk. I still think trying out some rugs or carpet is a good idea where practical, just because it’s humane and may reduce friction in the relationship. But I’m not sure I’d even want to let them know much about what you do because you wouldn’t want to give the impression that weird complaints gets results.