11 ms·

It doesn't talk about it much but...Apartment noise from neighbors. Oh. My. Gosh. I live in an area where many expensive, luxury apartments have been built in

It doesn't talk about it much but...Apartment noise from neighbors. Oh. My. Gosh. I live in an area where many expensive, luxury apartments have been built in the last few years and every single one of them have complaints from "hearing the person above me set the toilet seat down" for example. I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors. I lived in a complex built in the 80's. It's dead silent. I can jump up and down on my floor and the neighbor below me will never hear. Now in a newer complex, I can't walk across my hardwood floored kitchen without knowing my neighbor will hear every footstep. I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise as it sounds like they are moving furniture ALL THE TIME. Even though it's not their fault...and they really aren't moving furniture every evening...They are just walking around... Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. You are creating a whole generation of buildings that are awful to live in. My next apartment, I have no idea what I'm going to do...the tour ends right away for me when I hear thumps from above the second I walk into the room. I seriously shouldn't and don't want to know every time the couple next to me has sex or the guys on the other side of me are watching a loud action movie. I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE.

robmiller 11y ago
I wrote about this on Quora [1] some time ago. Here are the highlights on some ways to check if the unit you're touring has an above average acoustical design without just making noise in an adjacent unit: (1) Is the floor construction concrete and steel or a wood joist system. The concrete/steel building type is preferred. A caveat is if it is a "loft" style with no ceiling (drywall, etc) and is open to the concrete structure for reasons I'll describe at the end. (2) Ask if the apartment building was designed to convert to condos at some point. If the potential conversion was known during design, an acoustics professional may have been involved. (3) Is the space marketed as "luxury?" While dangerous to trust marketing this much, if legitimately so, should have "above norm" acoustical separation between spaces. (4) Pull a wall plate off a switch that's in a demising wall between units and look for fiberglass in the wall cavity around the edges of the backbox. You may be able to knock on walls and tell if they're hollow or fiberglass filled. If you find two layers of drywall between the plate and backbox, that's a good sign. (5) Often the bathroom/toilet plumbing is along the corridor wall in newer buildings. Can you hear the water running from the corridor? If so, you can expect to hear the neighbors' plumbing above your unit too. Listen for water hissing in the walls while you run the kitchen sink. Yes there's noise through walls from adjacent neighbors, but be aware of impact noises above. If floors are hard (not carpet) expect to hear footfall noise unless a resilient underlayment was properly installed in the units and/or the ceiling is isolated in the unit below. If the unit has hardwood floors, check for a gap between the baseboard trim and the floor by running a business card between. If it doesn't fit, then the resilient floor is compromised and your neighbors below are likely to hear your footfalls, and chances are you will hear your neighbors' above too. [1] https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-tell-how-sound-proof-the-walls-are/answer/Rob-Miller-9 https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-te...
- kuschku 11y ago
  What for buildings that are brick-on-mortar?
  - robmiller 11y ago
    I presume this is the exterior facade? What's the interior construction?
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Chalk-Sandstone bricks on common mortar interior, it’s the most common interior construction here. The exterior is clay bricks on mortar.
      - robmiller 11y ago
        I'm not familiar with the details of this construction, but in general massive building materials (concrete, CMU, brick) are your friend. The risks are penetrations through these materials for pipes and electrical conduit or other openings at the top of wall. It would make for a good blog post to talk about how mass relates to sound blocking between spaces and how we've learned to "hack" wall partitions using mass-air-mass assemblies (like standard drywall walls) instead of just mass alone.
- turar 11y ago
  At this point, if I ever have to look at living in apartments/condos again, I will limit my search only to concrete high rise buildings. Which usually means at least 8 floors or taller -- I don't think it's possible to build that tall with plywood garbage.
  - robmiller 11y ago
    Honestly, I would too. Having plywood subfloors might be ok if they topped it with gypcrete, but living with floor squeaks and footfalls from another tenant above is no fun. Plywood has it's place in economical housing that's earthquake safe. The shame is just if the market rent is high enough that better construction could have been afforded by the developer in the first place.
Anechoic 11y ago
Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE. There are three potential problems that we frequently come across: 1. Many building developers just don't care, so long as the structure meets minimum code (which is typically based on the International Building Code model standard of STC 50) 2. Many building developers (and architects) may care, but don't have the knowledge to pull it off. They may even design sound insulation measures based on existing designs, but may not be aware that a particular detail difference between the reference design and their design may render the the sound insulation moot. 3. The developers and/or architects may care and may have the knowledge to properly design the structure, but the contractors either don't care or don't have the knowledge to construct the building properly leading to short-circuits or substitutions the render the sound insulation design useless.
- Cshelton 11y ago
  I'm not an architect, or familiar with construction practices, etc. My theory is however that because the demand for high end, luxury rental apartments, or even just apartments in general, is so high in some places right now that contractors/investors know that despite short-cuts and things like sound insulation, they know they can still fill the complex and meet/beat their ROI goals. The problem with that, I believe, is the demand will come and go and these buildings 10-20 years from now might have a hard time keeping the needed occupancy rate. So many things can affect that, i.e., young couples/families actually may not mind living in urban apartments, however; If a large number of complexes are terrible with noise pollution, they may opt to move to a stand alone house in the suburbs. And many other societal trends, etc. I think we are cutting corners on many new buildings right now that may create low occupancy areas later on. All the growth and development of today will be for nothing. It's the mentality of, "I don't care about this neighborhood or what it will be like in 10 years+, I can make my money now and move on, who cares". How do we make the large capital investment world care and stay interested long-term (10+ years).
  - Anechoic 11y ago
    In the case of sound insulation, the solution would be to mandate sound insulation (STC) and ceiling/floor insulation (IIC) testing as a condition of obtaining the occupancy permit. Such testing is performed on HUD-financed housing and for housing where state and/or Federal authorities are kicking in funds to mitigate noise from a capital project (typically an airport, highway or rail project). For private developments, it's typically not done unless the developer thinks the architect or contractor screwed up and wants to cover his ass in the event of a lawsuit down the line.
billforsternz 11y ago
This resonates (!?) with me. For 10 years or so noise from above was perhaps the single most annoying thing in my life. You can adapt to a continuous noise, but intermittent stomping ... oy vey. If I ever go back to apartment living, somehow ensuring this is not a problem (if you are just viewing it's hard to know whether pleasant quietness is temporary or permanent) is my number one priority.
cmarschner 11y ago
I guess you should just make sure the sound reduction standard is part of the specs. The country where I live (Germany) uses a pretty simple rule to reduce the number of court cases for sound protection issues like this - a certain standard is considered "state of the art", and if a developer wants to deviate from it he needs to specify it explicitly in the contract. For residential multi-tenant buildings, state of the art is considered what is specified in class II in DIN norm 4109 appendix 2. that stated a minimum reduction of 55 DB for walls and ceilings under a certain measurement regime, and a maximum level of 25 DB for technical installments in the building, among other things. I moved into such a building lately, and most of the times (like now) it is dead silent to the point you can listen to the clock ticking. If a baby cries at night in the floor above, it can be audible, but not to the point where one gets woken up. Overall it is a good compromise that is as good or better to the places I lived in previously.
- TillE 11y ago
  I'm sure this is all true, but I've also heard that Neubau apartment buildings tend to transmit a lot more noise (I've never lived in one), as compared to Altbau apartments with much thicker walls.
  - cmarschner 11y ago
    Lived in altbau buildings for 10+ years. It totally depends. In our previous flat the most silent wall was the (modern) drywall to the adjacent apartment. In the one before there were steal beams which transmitted noise if something like a speaker was positioned too close. The worst buildings are probably the postwar period buildings which were built both cheaply and without the regulatory framework in use today.
    - eru 11y ago
      I lived in a very quiet building from the 50s in east Germany. But my apartment was at the top, so no noises from above, and only quiet people to one site.
monort 11y ago
If you are ready to pay more, why not to soundproof your room? It's not expensive.
- cm3 11y ago
  How can you after the fact effectively silence sound from below (floor) and above (ceiling)? Genuinely curious what's possible and not expensive.
  - jwatte 11y ago
    "Expensive" is in the eye of the payer. Do you think a few thousand is expensive? A developer absolutely does. Also, it takes more space, so doing it after the fact may lower your ceiling more than you're comfortable with (assuming your landlord is even willing.) We could solve this with code updates and strict enforcement. However, pro business types will complain that it increases rents (probably true in the short term) and drives down development (probably not actually true.) Also, better sound management generates more livable spaces that better support city growth in 10 or 20 years, which is also important from a sustainability point of view. But nobody wants to pay for that. That's "someone else's" problem.
    - r00fus 11y ago
      Note: Ceiling heights are part of spec. Even losing 1" could put you out of spec. As a renter you have very little power to do anything.
      - isolate 11y ago
        Where I live you're allowed to stick things on the ceiling as long as you take them off again when you leave.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Cheaper and easier to do it during development vs. after the fact. He wants to move to a new place with sound insulation and not do it himself.
csomar 11y ago
> I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE. I wonder where you live. I live in a under-developed nation with bad real-estate and there is a good number of building with special noise isolation. Granted, they are double the price. Not only because of noise isolation, they come with other perks (security, pool, quality of materials...). If you are living in a 2million+ city, my guess this kind of estate already exists. Maybe you should search better.
- Cshelton 11y ago
  United States. City is 2 million +, however the area I'm in is very hip/wealthy (mostly young professionals between 23 - 40 with salary jobs). I like to joke that our city's official bird is the crane, because there is a construction crane on every block. The speed at which they build new apartments is ridiculous. They are simply cranking them out as fast as possible to meet demand. This city is also had the 1/2nd highest growth rate in the US in 14'/15'...if that's any clue. (it's Dallas...) And yes, apartments do exist here that have great sound insulation, however out of the newer complexes, I'd say most do not. That is my point really.
- seanmcdirmid 11y ago
  I live in a 20million+ city in China (we call 2million a village). Everything is concrete and overbuilt (walls, floors are thick); so noise for the units around you is fine. However, outside is another story: I've had many sleepless nights with construction outside, and delivery trucks with backup warning sounds...ugh. Right now is dance-in-the-square time, and I can hear whatever music the old ladies are dancing to pretty clearly!
elchief 11y ago
There was a good article a few weeks ago about apartment noise: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-for-new-york-noise.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-f...
- cmarschner 11y ago
  Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10766672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10766672
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
hackbinary 11y ago
>> I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors. >> I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise ... I just live on the top floor.
- MBCook 11y ago
  When I was apartment hunting I refuse to live on any floor but the top for this exact reason. My heating and cooling bills are terrible because there's not much insulation, but there's no one walking around above my head.
Overtonwindow 11y ago
I noticed this when I lived in a 12 story concrete cinderblock in Crystal city Virginia. I never once heard my neighbors. It was literally concrete between every floor. Then I moved out to Fairfax Virginia into a newer, plywood construction. I could hear my neighbors quite well. Newer buildings used cheaper materials, and as such sound travels easily.
brenschluss 11y ago
> Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. Noise isolation is expensive. Owners and developers rarely want to pay for it. The problem is rarely the architect/engineer, the problem is that it's an expensive up-front design+construction cost, and also difficult to achieve after construction.
pasbesoin 11y ago
^^^ This, SO much. I'm single. I ended up in a house solely because every shared living space tried had serious noise issues. I don't need all this room -- nor the maintenance. But I am most reluctant to share walls, ceiling, even a floor with someone else, ever again. Even if it's quiet, moving in, who knows what you're going to get next month, year? Urban planners want us to live more densely and "efficiently." My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Urban planners want us to live more densely and "efficiently." My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk. Absolutely. It's not a small problem or minor inconvenience. I once got home to my flat after work to find that my downstairs neighbours had come round and aggressively criticised my then-girlfriend for the noise we'd been making walking around the previous night... when we were staying with family 50 miles away. The noise was bad enough that normally pleasant people had apparently been very much not pleasant, and it was carrying across multiple homes such that they couldn't even tell who it was that was keeping them up all night. (Spoiler: It turned out to be the flat adjacent to ours on the same level, where the thin carpets originally installed had been replaced by otherwise attractive wood flooring.)
- eru 11y ago
  > My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk. People in some other parts of the world already denser and quieter. It's a shame the US is so backward there.
- 15353535 11y ago
  I had to make this decision recently. I am moving into an apartment soon. It is all concrete though, so I think it might be different to the types of apartments you tried. I did think about moving into a house in the middle of nowhere but the thought of a single person living in a 4 bedroom house with a yard was just too ridiculous for me. Also, the windows of the houses were only a few metres apart so I am not sure it would have been an better. The other problem was that the demographic was very different to me.
Spooky23 11y ago
They don't care. The bottom dollar is all they care about. Even new single family custom construction will be built like crap if you don't ride them hard and pay premium prices. The only quiet low/mid rise buildings built now are the precast concrete building (think Hampton inn). They only get built that way because of the building codes.
simonebrunozzi 11y ago
This is what regulation is for. It would never work just by asking them.
- lmm 11y ago
  The free market ought to be able to handle this fine. It's not that hard to find out how noisy an apartment will be when you're considering moving in.
- fredo699 11y ago
  Jesus, do you just scream "WE NEED TO SOCIALIZE SANDWICHES" every time you're hungry?
bkjelden 11y ago
I toured an apartment building several years ago that had 2-story units, where a unit's living space was on top of it's bedrooms, so a cross-section of the building would look something like: Unit C living space Unit C bedrooms Unit B living space Unit B bedrooms Unit A living space Unit A bedrooms This means that the space directly above one's bedrooms - their very own living space - was less likely to be occupied while they were sleeping. Seemed like a very ingenious design to me. My life has taken me to live in SFHs now, so I don't really look at a lot of apartment buildings anymore, but I've never seen another building with this design.
- djhn 11y ago
  Except if your sleep-awake cycle don't align. This goes horribly wrong if you are entertaining guests while your neighbours are trying to sleep, or the family upstairs is having children's saturday playtime while the doctor downstairs is trying to sleep off a 36-hour double night shift.
  - jakobegger 11y ago
    Read the comment again. Your room above your bedroom is your own living room. This means that the family upstairs having a party is your own family :) Most modern buildings with concrete ceilings have little sounds transmission to the apartment above, the most annoying sound transmission is from footsteps to the apartment below. That's why that idea works so nicely.
    - djhn 11y ago
      Oh, I see! The text layout confused me. I thought you meant the layouts are stacked so that identical apartments aren't exactly on top of one another, but shifted.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
awjr 11y ago
I can remember looking at a new build apartment in Bath (UK) and having my wife go next door and talk loudly. We walked away from it. Building regs are minimum standards.
vanderZwan 11y ago
I vaguely recall reading an article summarising research that found that one of the overlooked methods of reducing crime in densely populated cities was better sound insulation. The problem is that it rarely is a direct cause, except in rare crime passionnel situations. However, there's a measurable indirect effect when you add up the extra irritation, lack of sleep, etc. which affects all inhabitants of an apartment block. The consequences are measurable when you look at the "average".

robmiller 11y ago

I wrote about this on Quora [1] some time ago. Here are the highlights on some ways to check if the unit you're touring has an above average acoustical design without just making noise in an adjacent unit: (1) Is the floor construction concrete and steel or a wood joist system. The concrete/steel building type is preferred. A caveat is if it is a "loft" style with no ceiling (drywall, etc) and is open to the concrete structure for reasons I'll describe at the end. (2) Ask if the apartment building was designed to convert to condos at some point. If the potential conversion was known during design, an acoustics professional may have been involved. (3) Is the space marketed as "luxury?" While dangerous to trust marketing this much, if legitimately so, should have "above norm" acoustical separation between spaces. (4) Pull a wall plate off a switch that's in a demising wall between units and look for fiberglass in the wall cavity around the edges of the backbox. You may be able to knock on walls and tell if they're hollow or fiberglass filled. If you find two layers of drywall between the plate and backbox, that's a good sign. (5) Often the bathroom/toilet plumbing is along the corridor wall in newer buildings. Can you hear the water running from the corridor? If so, you can expect to hear the neighbors' plumbing above your unit too. Listen for water hissing in the walls while you run the kitchen sink. Yes there's noise through walls from adjacent neighbors, but be aware of impact noises above. If floors are hard (not carpet) expect to hear footfall noise unless a resilient underlayment was properly installed in the units and/or the ceiling is isolated in the unit below. If the unit has hardwood floors, check for a gap between the baseboard trim and the floor by running a business card between. If it doesn't fit, then the resilient floor is compromised and your neighbors below are likely to hear your footfalls, and chances are you will hear your neighbors' above too. [1] https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-tell-how-sound-proof-the-walls-are/answer/Rob-Miller-9 https://www.quora.com/When-renting-an-apartment-how-can-I-te...

kuschku 11y ago
What for buildings that are brick-on-mortar?
- robmiller 11y ago
  I presume this is the exterior facade? What's the interior construction?
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Chalk-Sandstone bricks on common mortar interior, it’s the most common interior construction here. The exterior is clay bricks on mortar.
    - robmiller 11y ago
      I'm not familiar with the details of this construction, but in general massive building materials (concrete, CMU, brick) are your friend. The risks are penetrations through these materials for pipes and electrical conduit or other openings at the top of wall. It would make for a good blog post to talk about how mass relates to sound blocking between spaces and how we've learned to "hack" wall partitions using mass-air-mass assemblies (like standard drywall walls) instead of just mass alone.
turar 11y ago
At this point, if I ever have to look at living in apartments/condos again, I will limit my search only to concrete high rise buildings. Which usually means at least 8 floors or taller -- I don't think it's possible to build that tall with plywood garbage.
- robmiller 11y ago
  Honestly, I would too. Having plywood subfloors might be ok if they topped it with gypcrete, but living with floor squeaks and footfalls from another tenant above is no fun. Plywood has it's place in economical housing that's earthquake safe. The shame is just if the market rent is high enough that better construction could have been afforded by the developer in the first place.

Anechoic 11y ago

Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE. There are three potential problems that we frequently come across: 1. Many building developers just don't care, so long as the structure meets minimum code (which is typically based on the International Building Code model standard of STC 50) 2. Many building developers (and architects) may care, but don't have the knowledge to pull it off. They may even design sound insulation measures based on existing designs, but may not be aware that a particular detail difference between the reference design and their design may render the the sound insulation moot. 3. The developers and/or architects may care and may have the knowledge to properly design the structure, but the contractors either don't care or don't have the knowledge to construct the building properly leading to short-circuits or substitutions the render the sound insulation design useless.

Cshelton 11y ago
I'm not an architect, or familiar with construction practices, etc. My theory is however that because the demand for high end, luxury rental apartments, or even just apartments in general, is so high in some places right now that contractors/investors know that despite short-cuts and things like sound insulation, they know they can still fill the complex and meet/beat their ROI goals. The problem with that, I believe, is the demand will come and go and these buildings 10-20 years from now might have a hard time keeping the needed occupancy rate. So many things can affect that, i.e., young couples/families actually may not mind living in urban apartments, however; If a large number of complexes are terrible with noise pollution, they may opt to move to a stand alone house in the suburbs. And many other societal trends, etc. I think we are cutting corners on many new buildings right now that may create low occupancy areas later on. All the growth and development of today will be for nothing. It's the mentality of, "I don't care about this neighborhood or what it will be like in 10 years+, I can make my money now and move on, who cares". How do we make the large capital investment world care and stay interested long-term (10+ years).
- Anechoic 11y ago
  In the case of sound insulation, the solution would be to mandate sound insulation (STC) and ceiling/floor insulation (IIC) testing as a condition of obtaining the occupancy permit. Such testing is performed on HUD-financed housing and for housing where state and/or Federal authorities are kicking in funds to mitigate noise from a capital project (typically an airport, highway or rail project). For private developments, it's typically not done unless the developer thinks the architect or contractor screwed up and wants to cover his ass in the event of a lawsuit down the line.

billforsternz 11y ago

This resonates (!?) with me. For 10 years or so noise from above was perhaps the single most annoying thing in my life. You can adapt to a continuous noise, but intermittent stomping ... oy vey. If I ever go back to apartment living, somehow ensuring this is not a problem (if you are just viewing it's hard to know whether pleasant quietness is temporary or permanent) is my number one priority.

cmarschner 11y ago

I guess you should just make sure the sound reduction standard is part of the specs. The country where I live (Germany) uses a pretty simple rule to reduce the number of court cases for sound protection issues like this - a certain standard is considered "state of the art", and if a developer wants to deviate from it he needs to specify it explicitly in the contract. For residential multi-tenant buildings, state of the art is considered what is specified in class II in DIN norm 4109 appendix 2. that stated a minimum reduction of 55 DB for walls and ceilings under a certain measurement regime, and a maximum level of 25 DB for technical installments in the building, among other things. I moved into such a building lately, and most of the times (like now) it is dead silent to the point you can listen to the clock ticking. If a baby cries at night in the floor above, it can be audible, but not to the point where one gets woken up. Overall it is a good compromise that is as good or better to the places I lived in previously.

TillE 11y ago
I'm sure this is all true, but I've also heard that Neubau apartment buildings tend to transmit a lot more noise (I've never lived in one), as compared to Altbau apartments with much thicker walls.
- cmarschner 11y ago
  Lived in altbau buildings for 10+ years. It totally depends. In our previous flat the most silent wall was the (modern) drywall to the adjacent apartment. In the one before there were steal beams which transmitted noise if something like a speaker was positioned too close. The worst buildings are probably the postwar period buildings which were built both cheaply and without the regulatory framework in use today.
  - eru 11y ago
    I lived in a very quiet building from the 50s in east Germany. But my apartment was at the top, so no noises from above, and only quiet people to one site.

monort 11y ago

If you are ready to pay more, why not to soundproof your room? It's not expensive.

cm3 11y ago
How can you after the fact effectively silence sound from below (floor) and above (ceiling)? Genuinely curious what's possible and not expensive.
- jwatte 11y ago
  "Expensive" is in the eye of the payer. Do you think a few thousand is expensive? A developer absolutely does. Also, it takes more space, so doing it after the fact may lower your ceiling more than you're comfortable with (assuming your landlord is even willing.) We could solve this with code updates and strict enforcement. However, pro business types will complain that it increases rents (probably true in the short term) and drives down development (probably not actually true.) Also, better sound management generates more livable spaces that better support city growth in 10 or 20 years, which is also important from a sustainability point of view. But nobody wants to pay for that. That's "someone else's" problem.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    Note: Ceiling heights are part of spec. Even losing 1" could put you out of spec. As a renter you have very little power to do anything.
    - isolate 11y ago
      Where I live you're allowed to stick things on the ceiling as long as you take them off again when you leave.
mahyarm 11y ago
Cheaper and easier to do it during development vs. after the fact. He wants to move to a new place with sound insulation and not do it himself.

csomar 11y ago

> I would pay so much more in rent per month for a place that had more sound insulation. Take note building developers. I WILL PAY MORE. I wonder where you live. I live in a under-developed nation with bad real-estate and there is a good number of building with special noise isolation. Granted, they are double the price. Not only because of noise isolation, they come with other perks (security, pool, quality of materials...). If you are living in a 2million+ city, my guess this kind of estate already exists. Maybe you should search better.

Cshelton 11y ago
United States. City is 2 million +, however the area I'm in is very hip/wealthy (mostly young professionals between 23 - 40 with salary jobs). I like to joke that our city's official bird is the crane, because there is a construction crane on every block. The speed at which they build new apartments is ridiculous. They are simply cranking them out as fast as possible to meet demand. This city is also had the 1/2nd highest growth rate in the US in 14'/15'...if that's any clue. (it's Dallas...) And yes, apartments do exist here that have great sound insulation, however out of the newer complexes, I'd say most do not. That is my point really.
seanmcdirmid 11y ago
I live in a 20million+ city in China (we call 2million a village). Everything is concrete and overbuilt (walls, floors are thick); so noise for the units around you is fine. However, outside is another story: I've had many sleepless nights with construction outside, and delivery trucks with backup warning sounds...ugh. Right now is dance-in-the-square time, and I can hear whatever music the old ladies are dancing to pretty clearly!

elchief 11y ago

There was a good article a few weeks ago about apartment noise: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-for-new-york-noise.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/realestate/soundproofing-f...

cmarschner 11y ago
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10766672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10766672

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hackbinary 11y ago

>> I now base what apartment I live in by the thickness and sound isolation of the walls and ceilings/floors. >> I have to take the people above me a bottle of wine and ask them kindly to try and not make as much noise ... I just live on the top floor.

MBCook 11y ago
When I was apartment hunting I refuse to live on any floor but the top for this exact reason. My heating and cooling bills are terrible because there's not much insulation, but there's no one walking around above my head.

Overtonwindow 11y ago

I noticed this when I lived in a 12 story concrete cinderblock in Crystal city Virginia. I never once heard my neighbors. It was literally concrete between every floor. Then I moved out to Fairfax Virginia into a newer, plywood construction. I could hear my neighbors quite well. Newer buildings used cheaper materials, and as such sound travels easily.

brenschluss 11y ago

> Architects, engineers, whoever...please, please, please, stop skimping out on noise insulation in new construction. Noise isolation is expensive. Owners and developers rarely want to pay for it. The problem is rarely the architect/engineer, the problem is that it's an expensive up-front design+construction cost, and also difficult to achieve after construction.

pasbesoin 11y ago

^^^ This, SO much. I'm single. I ended up in a house solely because every shared living space tried had serious noise issues. I don't need all this room -- nor the maintenance. But I am most reluctant to share walls, ceiling, even a floor with someone else, ever again. Even if it's quiet, moving in, who knows what you're going to get next month, year? Urban planners want us to live more densely and "efficiently." My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk.

Silhouette 11y ago
Urban planners want us to live more densely and "efficiently." My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk. Absolutely. It's not a small problem or minor inconvenience. I once got home to my flat after work to find that my downstairs neighbours had come round and aggressively criticised my then-girlfriend for the noise we'd been making walking around the previous night... when we were staying with family 50 miles away. The noise was bad enough that normally pleasant people had apparently been very much not pleasant, and it was carrying across multiple homes such that they couldn't even tell who it was that was keeping them up all night. (Spoiler: It turned out to be the flat adjacent to ours on the same level, where the thin carpets originally installed had been replaced by otherwise attractive wood flooring.)
eru 11y ago
> My primary response: Fix the noise problems. Then we can talk. People in some other parts of the world already denser and quieter. It's a shame the US is so backward there.
15353535 11y ago
I had to make this decision recently. I am moving into an apartment soon. It is all concrete though, so I think it might be different to the types of apartments you tried. I did think about moving into a house in the middle of nowhere but the thought of a single person living in a 4 bedroom house with a yard was just too ridiculous for me. Also, the windows of the houses were only a few metres apart so I am not sure it would have been an better. The other problem was that the demographic was very different to me.

Spooky23 11y ago

They don't care. The bottom dollar is all they care about. Even new single family custom construction will be built like crap if you don't ride them hard and pay premium prices. The only quiet low/mid rise buildings built now are the precast concrete building (think Hampton inn). They only get built that way because of the building codes.

simonebrunozzi 11y ago

This is what regulation is for. It would never work just by asking them.

lmm 11y ago
The free market ought to be able to handle this fine. It's not that hard to find out how noisy an apartment will be when you're considering moving in.
fredo699 11y ago
Jesus, do you just scream "WE NEED TO SOCIALIZE SANDWICHES" every time you're hungry?

bkjelden 11y ago

I toured an apartment building several years ago that had 2-story units, where a unit's living space was on top of it's bedrooms, so a cross-section of the building would look something like: Unit C living space Unit C bedrooms Unit B living space Unit B bedrooms Unit A living space Unit A bedrooms This means that the space directly above one's bedrooms - their very own living space - was less likely to be occupied while they were sleeping. Seemed like a very ingenious design to me. My life has taken me to live in SFHs now, so I don't really look at a lot of apartment buildings anymore, but I've never seen another building with this design.

djhn 11y ago
Except if your sleep-awake cycle don't align. This goes horribly wrong if you are entertaining guests while your neighbours are trying to sleep, or the family upstairs is having children's saturday playtime while the doctor downstairs is trying to sleep off a 36-hour double night shift.
- jakobegger 11y ago
  Read the comment again. Your room above your bedroom is your own living room. This means that the family upstairs having a party is your own family :) Most modern buildings with concrete ceilings have little sounds transmission to the apartment above, the most annoying sound transmission is from footsteps to the apartment below. That's why that idea works so nicely.
  - djhn 11y ago
    Oh, I see! The text layout confused me. I thought you meant the layouts are stacked so that identical apartments aren't exactly on top of one another, but shifted.
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awjr 11y ago

I can remember looking at a new build apartment in Bath (UK) and having my wife go next door and talk loudly. We walked away from it. Building regs are minimum standards.

vanderZwan 11y ago

I vaguely recall reading an article summarising research that found that one of the overlooked methods of reducing crime in densely populated cities was better sound insulation. The problem is that it rarely is a direct cause, except in rare crime passionnel situations. However, there's a measurable indirect effect when you add up the extra irritation, lack of sleep, etc. which affects all inhabitants of an apartment block. The consequences are measurable when you look at the "average".