Dilemma with recent house move and future

johnnpaull12

Mildreds_Earrings said:

johnnpaull12 said:

I don’t always have the TV on. Plus it’s a vibration whenever they walk upstairs, close a cupboard, close a door it sounds like it’s coming from within our house. Not sure I can put up with it for 10-15+ years

No you can't put up with it for 10/15 years. Speak to your partner, discuss your budget and see if you can move to a smaller detached house or a semi detached bungalow which tend to have older, quieter neighbours. We moved to a semi detached bungalow because of noisy, inconsiderate neighbours. Never looked back. That said, in your case, it's their everyday living noise that's getting to you but it does not matter - the noise is interfering with you enjoying your own home. 

Yes moving is very stressful but moving to a new place and having peace and quiet in your own home will be worth it. I am speaking from experience. Speak to your partner and move. All the best. 

Thank you. It’s reassuring to hear people don’t think I’m mad for wanting to move again already

johnnpaull12

andy444 said:

How old is your house out of interest?

Hi Andy, the house is 33 years old

spinspiral

In my experience, once you are sensitised to a certain noise, you will never get used to it.
Don't waste time on soundproofing, you will be disappointed.
IMO you are unhappy living there and always will be so instigate the sale straight away; your only goal now should be to move into another house.
The fact you are doing something about it and starting the process will lift your spirits.
Life is too short.

johnnpaull12

GDB2222 said:

Sound proofing a wall will lose you around 15cms off your room size. You need to build a new wall, inside your home, acoustically isolated from the party wall. As you know, there are so many ways for sound to travel that it may not help much, anyway. As well as being v expensive.

Get some very comfortable Bluetooth headphones, and play white noise or the TV through them. A decent pair will cost £100. 

Put the money saved towards moving.

And the major concern would be if we take 15cm off the wall and it doesn’t work.

That leads to us being £5k down, either we have to declare the works done when selling or surveyors pick it up, then it affecting the sale

johnnpaull12

MalMonroe said:

I've also had a noisy neighbour problem in the past, more than once, and it does get you down, I agree. However, I don't think all is lost in your case and you seem to be a very reasonable and tolerant person in that you quite understand that your neighbours aren't being deliberately noisy and three children do make substantial noise. Having said that, not all children do and maybe they're just allowed to do their own thing a bit too often. 

My first instinct would be and was when I lived in a semi, to have a word with the neighbours but although mine apologised and said they'd try to tone it down, not much happened. I had hoped that making them aware that they were being a tad (a lot!) inconsiderate and thoughtless might help them realise that other people lived through the walls. They were aware but didn't care.

However, all is not lost. I managed to move home and you will too. You're young yet and have the ability to save money so that you will hopefully be moved into your new detached home in under two years. Not everyone has that option. In the meantime you can try to cope with it as best you can. Try putting a radio on sometimes to counteract the nuisance noise or play some music or try to shut out the noise from next door and make a bit of your own in another way. Your neighbours won't even notice.

I wouldn't waste money on soundproofing. I tried that once some years ago when I moved into a ground floor flat beneath people who were deaf and had their TV on so loud I not only knew what programme they were watching but also what the characters were saying! I just had it installed in one ceiling at a cost of £1k but was disappointed because I could still hear noise from upstairs and the installer came back and added another layer of whatever it was he'd installed. It still wasn't 100 percent satisfactory. I did have a word with those neighbours too and they were quite shocked to know how their sound travelled. They actually apologised profusely and turned their TV down. Where I live now my daughter and I use headphones a lot. Not for neighbours' benefit but we like them.

Things will get better, you have the means to 'escape' and it could be much worse. Once I lived somewhere where the neighbourhood teenagers were so bored they used to throw bricks all over the place. My car was damaged more than once and so was my living room window. Police were utterly apathetic and I sold that house - with full disclosure - at a loss to one of those companies who buy any property rather than trying to sell it to some other family. 

PS sorry this went on a bit but what I was trying to say is that I'm sure things are going to turn out well for you in the end! 

Thank you MalMonroe no need to apologise, I really appreciate the advice and it’s reassuring people don’t think I’m being crazy and that I’m at least making some sort of sense and logic.

We are fortunate and lucky that we both have decent, well paid jobs to help us if it comes to needing to move on.

Sorry to hear of your past experiences they sound dreadful, hope you’re happy where you are now

johnnpaull12

spinspiral said:

In my experience, once you are sensitised to a certain noise, you will never get used to it.
Don't waste time on soundproofing, you will be disappointed.
IMO you are unhappy living there and always will be so instigate the sale straight away; your only goal now should be to move into another house.
The fact you are doing something about it and starting the process will lift your spirits.
Life is too short.

Thanks for the reply. 

I do believe that I have become overly sensitive to this noise and that’s what’s getting to me as much as the noise itself. The fact I might not be 100% at any time while living here is what worries me.

Yeah soundproofing I imagine can be effective for some situations but ours is quite complex and a professional company even said there’s no guarantee. I read on another forum that someone else became obsessed and chased the problem all over the house until he was £15k down and had no choice but to give up. He ended up selling.

It has put my mind at ease knowing that we could do something about it. Life’s too short to be unhappy, like you said. 

electraglide

I really sympathise as I am in the same position. I too agonised over soundproofing.  In the end I decided to get my bedroom wall soundproofed as being woken/not getting to sleep because of noise was the most distressing thing. I got a specialist firm to fit the Reducto Clip system. You only lose 60mm of floor space and they say it reduces noise by 50db. I've had it four months now and while its not a complete solution it has worked really well to take out 90% of the noise, some of which was impact, banging doors etc. But do get a specialist firm to fit it and not a general builder.

Stonesmike

Slightly similar to you, wife and I recently retired and due to both starting work early didn’t realise next door neighbour goes on his exercise machine anytime  between 07.00 - 09.30 plus fairly loud music. I did go round and asked them nicely if they could consider exercising later or actually move the machine to their garage, but they looked at me if I was on a different planet and the noise continued!!!

They do have young kids, who get a bit noisy at times, but not a big problem as the exercising.

I am in the process of doing our house up and will be looking for a detached property this year, I can’t keep on being on tender hooks every morning, waiting for the noise to start.

Best of luck to you.

swaledale_one

Due to two old woman that liked to get drunk and sing karaoke most evenings and early mornings and regularly left a radio on prior to going away for week or two we decided to get our adjoining bedroom party wall soundproofed, lost half a foot of the bedroom but meant 80% of the noise was frozen out which was total bliss. 

The living room was the worst due to the chimney breasts adjoining but nowt you can really do with it

I too lived on the edge waiting for that next noise.

After sound proofing the bedroom we got better sleep but still put the house on the market and started to look for a new home.

I stumbled across a new street being built and found a 3 bed detached house with lovely sized front and rear gardens and 3 car driveway leading up to the attached garage for £98k, we put a deposit down after seeing the show home and then lowered the asking price on the semi sold it within 3 weeks and haven't looked back since.

drivingmscrazy

ohdarn said:

People often say that older houses are better constructed but our terraced house was built in 1910 and we can hear pretty much everything from next door.

The kids are pretty much feral and I swear they play drums on the radiator pipes and communicate via screaming. I get kids make noise, we've got two, but sometimes the parents don't seem to bother with controlling certain behaviours.

Plus the parents screaming obscenities at their kids can sometimes get you down.

You think you'll get used to it but actually it seems to get worse. 

I used an MP3 track called BoomBuster to counteract another neighbour that blared out thumpy music all the time and that worked really well at getting rid of the noise. Depends if you can tolerate white noise I guess.

Maybe just do it up and sell it on.

Good luck.

I think we share neighbours haha.  My neighbours are the noisiest I've ever known.  They are screaming now.  No one talks, they scream and it goes on til 3am weekends (i'd say 1am is the norm).  It's like a school playground.  And the doors are banging, they have a sliding wardrobe that shares a wall with my bed and whooooosh crash when it opens and a louder crash each time it closes.  They are on computer games with (I assume) headphones and are screaming random things.  All the voices are super high pitched too.  It's bedlam.  Then it goes quiet for about 30 mins and BOOOOOM it all kicks of again.  The atmosphere must be toxic, I'm sure someone will have a heart attack.  It really can't be healthy.  There's 4 kids ages 5 -18 n the parents.  Oh and the windows always seem to be open.  

It was a shock as an old lady lived there before and I always felt like I was the one being noisy, so I  initially welcomed having a family living there.  I have now kind of got used to it (2 yrs) but everyone nearby has mentioned it.  They know they are super noisy, so there's not much I can do

On a positive note, I do feel more relaxed if I'm making a noise or want to do some diy. I can put my washine on 1 midnight and not have to use the timer - such luxuries eh.  And they are the sort that will do anythings for you, so swings and roundabouts I guess.

Unfortunately anyone is social housing is stuck and has to make the best of it.

My advice, if it's affecting the OPs quality of life, I'd say get out while you can cos you never know what's around the corner.  Suggest sitting in car at tnight near new house before buying to check out ht ambience... try not to look too dodgy though