Wooden flooring noise from upstairs flat

tomduff

Hi, we bought our ground floor, purpose-built maisonette about a year ago.  There was always some noise coming through from the upstairs tenants (footsteps on the wooden flooring), but towards end of last year the tenants (family with two young girls) moved out, new tenants moved in and the noise became significantly worse.  It's causing my wife and I much stress, we just can't relax properly at home at the weekend & when I work from home it's incredibly distracting / annoying.

They have three children and it appears that the bulk of the noise is coming from the crawling of their youngest two (not something that can really be helped), although their oldest does run around often when he's in the house.  We've discussed the noise with them numerous times and they assure us that they have taken measures to reduce this (including putting down rugs etc.), so not sure what more we can do on this front (especially as crawling sound shouldn't be coming through floorboards this loudly - my phone picks up ~60db from the crawling).

The fundamental issue seems to stem from the fact that the landlord of the upstairs property (& our freeholder) replaced the carpets with wooden flooring a number of years ago at the same time as expanding that flat into the loft and it seems that there was very little soundproofing done on this new flooring.  Have raised this with the freeholder but he is very slow at replying and, whilst he has proposed getting someone to look at the floor, has not done so as yet and doesn't appear to be particularly motivated to solve the problem.

Struggling to know how to proceed.  I can't find anything in our lease on soundproofing / floor noise, so doesn't appear I can enforce anything specific there.  We could contact the council and make a noise complaint, but if we end up needing to sell the place I don't really want a dispute on file.  Selling the place is the option of last resort - really not keen to do this given we only moved in a year ago.

I do think I need to step things up with the freeholder - we've been trying to be friendly in our communication as don't want to damage the relationship, but that's not yielded results so far (despite us sending audio recordings of the noise).  Besides that, I'm really running out of ideas.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Hoping someone here might have successfully navigated this kind of situation before.

Thanks for any help you can give!

jamesperrett

The most successful approach is going to be building a new ceiling under the existing ceiling.

RelievedSheff

You could try adding  a second "sound proof" ceiling to your property but this is unlikely to be successful in blocking out all of the noise from your upstairs neighbours. Sound is transmitted in many different ways through buildings and blocking it all in an existing property is just not achievable. 

You won't like my advice but if the noise is really bothering you that much I would suggest moving house. We put up with neighbour noise in a semi detached property for 12 years and it was only when we moved to a detached property (I know that not everyone can do this) that we realised just what effect the noise from next door was having on our lives. You can not underestimate the effect it has on you. 

tomduff

Thanks both.  Building a new ceiling sounds expensive and not sure this would solve the problem

I'm going to keep badgering the freeholder and see if he takes action.  Hoping when the upstairs kids start walking the issue might also get a bit better (given the crawling is the main problem) - but not sure how loud toddlers toddling will be!

Our fixed rate mortgage period ends in Feb, so will see how things pan out over next 6 months and then make a decision as to whether we need to sell.  I still think it'll have been worth it financially to buy the place (compared with continuing to rent somewhere), but obviously not exactly ideal to sell so soon.

Thanks again for your advice