Sound insulation / noise transfer between houses

Windofchange

I don't know about that, but you can get acoustic dampening quite cheaply now, so if the insulation itself doesn't work then I'm sure there will be a solution with price dictating how much more peaceful your life is. I'm building a garden office out the back next year, so that will be my retreat if needs be. From the other half too! 

koalakoala

If you are used to living in a detached property you won’t like it. Guaranteed.

nfmg

What about terraced houses on a steep slope? Worse than terraced on a flat street? No/not much difference?

KittleSkittle

I live in the end house of a small terrace. Built on a hill so the houses are staggered a bit both vertically and horizontally. I share a wall with my neighbours in the kitchen and one bedroom upstairs. The living room, the room where I sleep, and the room I use as a study are on the other side of the house. It is the quietest place I’ve ever lived! I can hear when my neighbours’ washing machine is on a spin cycle, as they must do mine, as we both have washing machines against the party wall in the kitchen, but no television, music, voices.

Another thing to watch for, which probably won’t be an issue with a semi, but might be with a terrace, is how close the house is to the street, and how busy the street is. I’ve lived in a couple of houses built right on the road and there can be a lot of noise from people walking past.

Mahsroh

Interesting thread. In my life (child and adult) i've lived in 5 houses that we're "attached" (either terraced or semi) and 1 flat. These have varied from a Victorian Terrace built circa 1900 to a modern townhouse built in 2004. All of them bar one had habitable rooms that backed onto each other. 

I've never had / noticed an issue with sound travelling from next door. Almost every one you hear "something" occasionally. Obvious stuff when there are DIY projects going on, plus certain sounds that "travel".... our last house we always heard a dining chair scraping on the floor for example, but never heard the TV, or voices. Our last neighbours a couple of months after they moved in came to us to say they hoped they didn't disturb us too much because they were very conscious / aware that they "weren't the quietest".... Honestly we almost never heard anything. 

The house we're in now (1930's) we've been in coming up to three months. I heard hammering from next door once and there was a bit of noise which sounded like a small gathering on NYE (not unreasonable). Otherwise we've not heard a single noise coming through the wall. 

It's a tough one I agree because not usually something you can gauge from a viewing and there will no doubt be people with very negative experiences, but from my experience i'd suggest for the vast majority of properties it's simply not a problem.

user1977

GDB2222 said:

user1977 said:

If you're looking at semis, I would simply avoid those where the party walls adjoin habitable rooms, then you're not getting the neighbours' noise coming directly through to the rooms where you want peace.

The key phrase that used to be used was "halls adjoining ". Has that gone out of fashion, as it used to be a big selling point?

I can't remember ever seeing it mentioned in the blurb - always just a task to look at the photos/floorplans for yourself in my experience.

oystercatcher

I have lived in four different semi detached properties over the last 40ish years and have never heard anything more than an occaisional clunk or scuffle. Houses all different ages too 1900 ish, 1940 ish , 1920 ish and now 1968 build. Noise would really annoy me too. 

If you find a place you like it might be worth asking a few locals in similar builds if they can hear their neighbours .

The noise that really annoys me is next door but one's children shouting in the garden. Not much I can do about that one sadly.

TripleH

We live in a new build semi. The only noise we hear is when next door have work done (and then only faintly). I do worry when our cats play tag and thunder up and down stairs but apparently that dound doesn't travel.

Previously the worst place was a new build block of flats. That was mainly heavy furniture scraping on tile floors. It was noisy generally later on, but that was as much with selfish attitudes rather than particularly poor insulation.

Drawingaline

We have lived in a variety of flats. Oldest one we could hear upstairs and they hates us having a fan on in the summer as it vibrated through the walls apparently?!

Solid 1960's purpose built one we were bottom floor. No noise at all. A couple of times from next door (house converted into flats) there was noise, and a couple of parties held in summer with windows open were noisy, but generally fine.

New build flat. Shocking. Woken by upstairs being intimate 😱 but we had two very small children so am sure they hated us! 

Semi detached house, no noise at all.

End terrace (but in reality only attached at the ground floor as was next to a bungalow) only DIY noise.

This house is a 20yr old terraced town house. We don't hear noise day to day, but maybe we have quiet neighbours and they hate our family if six charging around! Have found sound travels up and down rather than through the walls sideways so when next door was having a garage door fitted it woke me (was off work and they started at 8.30, she was mortified at not warning us!) And I was two floors and the back of the house away. 

So it's dependant on a lot of factors. I was wary about this terrace, but it was too perfect not to offer on, and we seem to have struck lucky 

Larches

Thanks everyone for sharing your experience. This is proving a really interesting exercise! I've read on here and elsewhere a lot of tales of woe and people advising against terraced and semi-detached altogether, to the point where I was beginning to think maybe we should rule them out even though it would massively limit our choice and potentially cost a lot more. But I think these last few comments are enough to reassure me that we should at least keep an open mind and pay a lot of attention to construction and layout, without necessarily relying on the idea of post-purchase soundproofing (as per my original question).

Call me fussy / paranoid / antisocial, but I have to say I do still instinctively prefer the idea of owning my own patch of land with my own separate building entirely within my control - not being subject to anyone else's actions whether it's day-to-day noise, building work, fire safety or whatever. But it's a luxury we maybe shouldn't over-prioritise, especially in an area with such a low proportion of detached options available. I guess we'll just have to do some careful viewings and see what feels right.