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I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing rea

I'm okay with these high rises so I can enjoy the quiet tranquility of rural Spain. Everytime we do stay in an apartment in Spain the lack of sound proofing really stands out. Perhaps even more so because everything is tiled, no carpets.

bedobi 3y ago
was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  Noise is the largest complaint my spouse has with dense buildings. I tune things out easily, but I also found myself self conscious about walking softly when I lived above people.
  - globular-toast 3y ago
    Me too. What's annoying is it seems hard to tell what it's going to be like before you actually move in. I've lived in a few different flats in the UK, all purpose built flats. I already knew flats in converted houses are generally terrible. I've been in some where you can hear everything your neighbour is up to. I'm not sure what's worse: hearing them or knowing they can hear you too. In two of them I could never hear a peep from the neighbours apart from footsteps on the floor upstairs. But seriously wondered if the neighbours ever made any noise at all, or whether it was just that well soundproofed. In my most recent flat, though, it's terrible. You can hear conversations through the floor but what's worse is when people make direct contact with walls/ceilings, like closing curtains or closing doors, it's like they are in your room. And this is despite the building having solid concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick. I do also wonder if it was really an illusion as the first two flats were in noisier areas. But, whatever the reason, it's so hard to tell what it's going to be like before moving in. I wish there standards so you could guarantee what it's going to be like. But until then, I will be seeking detached housing because I just can't stand the noise.
    - Tade0 3y ago
      > And this is despite the building having solid concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick. The noise is coming in through the holes made to put plumbing - especially district heating. In my current apartment the owner wanted to conceal the piping, so he hid it behind an enclosure made out of plaster with a service hatch. The whole thing is currently a resonance chamber that lets me follow my dowstairs neighbour's conversations.
      - globular-toast 3y ago
        This is my theory with respect to hearing voices from downstairs. It only takes the tiniest little air gap to make a huge difference and I can tell there is one somewhere. I'm not sure about the problem with direct contact with walls/ceilings, though. I suspect this is more down to the construction and the walls/ceiling being directly attached to the concrete shell, or something.
- randsp 3y ago
  I can confirm this. I am from Spain and I have lived in a few cities all around the country and the lack of soundproofing in every building is a common thing, regardless of town or area, it seems like all buildings from 1970 were built ignoring any sound proof.
- pja 3y ago
  The Spanish just don’t seem to care about noise at the institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to sleep. Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national press that week detailing all the ways in which noise in Spanish cities was deleterious to health & wellbeing and asking why no-one ever did anything about it. Constant noise just seems to be accepted as being an inevitable part of life, rather than something to be fixed.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I am living in south of spain and not only spanish do not care about hearing noise, I think they actually do like being noisy and hearing noise. They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. At the beginning I almost felt I should have interrupted couples in the middle of their conversations. I thought they were arguing and were about to become physical against each other, shouting mere inches from each other face with arms throwing all over the place. But no, you quickly realize they are just talking about trivial things, agreeing on something or just complaining about something external. Living there you kind of get used to it.
    - circlefavshape 3y ago
      Chileans have "spaniard" jokes reflecting this (or they used to in the 80s anyway)
    - rewmie 3y ago
      > They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. That's my experience as well. Sometimes it's hard to tell apart if there's a bar brawl happening on the pub down the road or if it's a grou having a good time. It also doesn't help that in both cases Spaniards curse like crazy.
      - prmoustache 3y ago
- Maken 3y ago
  Noise is not the biggest problem: Cheap apartment buildings from the 60s and 70s has such thin walls what they have no thermal isolation whatsoever. In poor neighborhoods you will see air conditioner machines everywhere because there is no other way to keep the flats livable.
- outside1234 3y ago
  The Spanish love the noise is my theory. They are a very social people. They probably think of it as comforting versus annoying, and like the person that lives next to the waterfall that can't hear it, it probably fades into the background of their consciousness. (I lived in Spain for two years.)
  - switch007 3y ago
    > The Spanish love the noise is my theory Totally. I think to them it represents and demonstrates liberation, freedom, fun, family and community. Loud means fun to them. People complaining about noise are seen as serious party-poopers.
    - anthk 3y ago
      Spaniard here. No, it depends. The Castilles can be pretty silent/quiet/calm compared to Andalusia and the Eastern coast.
      - switch007 3y ago
        Oh that's interesting. Do you (or: do people usually) exclude Madrid from Castilla? That's the only place in Spain I've lived and would not class the people I knew as quiet and calm. But then again it's a melting pot of people from all over Spain, so who knows! And the calmest and quietest people I met were from the east coast :D Definitely agree about Andalusia though
        anthk 3y ago
        Well, Madrid it's a melting pot and both a sinking hole where lots of population of Castille end there, and their mentality shifts OFC. It's not the same having to live in a small town in Castile of <2000 people vs doing that the literal capital of Spain.
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- LegitShady 3y ago
  >it's maddening, I don't understand it Costs less to build, sells for the same money, more profit made.
- Tade0 3y ago
  As someone who grew up in a commie block, I think density over a certain point just sucks. Cities in southern Europe are generally denser than what the communists built and to me this is simply too much. I remember staying in Bilbao and the garbage truck waking me up on each garbage day because its sound bounced back and forth between the walls and some genius thought it would be a good idea to have it do its run during the night. Meanwhile back at home if it weren't for a construction site that propped up recently there would have been at least 70 meters to the building next to mine.
Havoc 3y ago
Possibly also cultural. Noticed that some cultures tend to talk louder.
- brvsft 3y ago
  One time when I was younger, my mom was talking to my grandmother on the phone, in Spanish. I could hear my grandmother on the other end too. They're both yelling. No idea what they were talking about, but I had to ask, something to the effect of, "Mom, are you angry? Why are you and grandma yelling?" Nope, nothing was wrong. That's just how they talk to each other in Spanish. Weird. It also never occurred to me why I didn't notice until whatever age I was, a teenager in high school. It never really occurred to me that they were always 'yelling' while talking to each other until that moment. There is the possibility that they really were upset and yelling, but my mother didn't often keep things from me (at least not as far as I know). I also noticed the yelling afterwards, so I'm confident that was me simply realizing that's how they talked after years of not noticing.
mathieuh 3y ago
I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.
- matsemann 3y ago
  I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with the windows closed. Point being that it depends. Edit: modern fire safety also dictates a bit how contained each unit should be, I guess.
  - kraig911 3y ago
    Norwegians are also some of those most quiet people I've ever met.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      Not disagreeing with your point but I’d like to support what the op said regarding “modern” buildings often having excellent sound deadening. My previous Dutch residence also had those “fake” (non concrete) walls but I couldn’t hear others in their rooms even when they played loud music (and they had different nationalities). But if no effort goes into soundproofing, it can be unsurprisingly pretty bad.
      - matsemann 3y ago
        Yeah, before living where I live now, I lived for a while in an building from the late 1800s. The smaller units were of course added cheaply in modern times, and didn't align well with how it was originally built. One example is the original thick wooden beams that was the floor went through the unit walls. So they same piece of wood I was walking on was also being walked on by the neighbors. That was a great transmission of vibrations, especially when their kid were playing on the floor hehe.
throwaway8877 3y ago
Nowhere else I have seen a conversation to constantly erupt between total strangers than in Spain. They just can't. So I can imagine that this constant involvement in the lives of others might be not a problem for them.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
That's fascinating! I've lived in apartments or condos most of my life and it just wasn't an issue. Possibly structural, possibly cultural - people tended to live a quiet life, unless you were unfortunate and got a real party neighbour. I live in a house right now and in some ways my life is louder (closer to the loud streets, neighbour's barking dogs and lawnmower and snowblower machines and constant little constructions etc).
astronads 3y ago
There’s evidence that constant unwanted noise can negatively impact our health: https://archive.ph/5mvYQ https://archive.ph/5mvYQ (nytimes) I don’t mind visiting cities, but I certainly would never live in one.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  When I live in rural low noise areas bp is 125/75 range. high noise areas bp is 155/105 range. BP drugs only drop it a little. Unfortunately just bought a house in a rush hour high noise area. wife loved in the house, I loved the visible sky, and we both loved the yard/garden. we saw it on a Sunday (very quiet day. :) Now I have a hard time being outside or taking my scope out for observing. Waiting for a stroke or kidney failure from the high BP.
- dijit 3y ago
  Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.[0] I live in Malmö on the southern edge of Sweden opposite Copenhagen, it's quieter here (pop: 350,000~) than my friends home village in Northamptonshire (Thrapston; pop: 6,239 as of 2011). This was largely because of the sheer volume of cars on the road, because you essentially have to drive to get anywhere. London is similar, despite not everyone needing a car there is traffic everywhere, you can notice that there's back streets and they tend to be very quiet until there are lots and lots of people, think >200 in a 100sqm area. Having the ability to escape noise is the most important part of noise management. Cities like London have almost no respite from the noise and thus it can be physically draining for many people to experience it. Including myself. [0]: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
  - cies 3y ago
    > Cars are loud.[0] Wheels rolling are loud. Also motorbikes. Combustion engines are even louder, and they are also put on bikes. Disillusioned young pedal-metalling in residential neighborhoods are the f*king worst.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    Cities are loud, cars are one (major) reason, but not the only one. I lived in a downtown area in a high-rise. 2am in the morning, no cars running but the hummming of all the equipment necessary to operate a city is noise pollution. Next, light pollution.
treespace8 3y ago
I feel that's why many people, especially families prefer detached homes. Sound proofing is guaranteed by the air gap. And if there is a problem with soundproofing you can solve it yourself by making changes. Perhaps row houses are best? Good density, and with a solid concrete wall seperating units to stop sound and fire from spreading?
Scoundreller 3y ago
Dunno about Spain, but in France, a relative in a ?9 story building basically gutted their place. Unlike North American condos, in France they own their windows and can replace them. They also built out a “frame” to install noise insulation on top of the shared walls, losing a bit of interior space (and a huge free bonus to the neighbours). Can’t remember if they did the ceiling too. Unfortunately, no flooring standards are an issue. In my Canadian condo, if you redo the floors, there’s some noise insulating requirement for your choice of flooring as it’s against concrete.
deleted 3y ago
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bedobi 3y ago

was gonna comment the same :melting face: I'm an armchair urbanist and all about density, and in well built buildings it's fine, even with tiled floors you can't really hear your neighbors but in Spain it's as if the buildings are built with zero soundproofing - you hear every single neighbor in the whole building and their tvs, radios, conversations, footsteps... it's maddening, I don't understand it

galangalalgol 3y ago
Noise is the largest complaint my spouse has with dense buildings. I tune things out easily, but I also found myself self conscious about walking softly when I lived above people.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Me too. What's annoying is it seems hard to tell what it's going to be like before you actually move in. I've lived in a few different flats in the UK, all purpose built flats. I already knew flats in converted houses are generally terrible. I've been in some where you can hear everything your neighbour is up to. I'm not sure what's worse: hearing them or knowing they can hear you too. In two of them I could never hear a peep from the neighbours apart from footsteps on the floor upstairs. But seriously wondered if the neighbours ever made any noise at all, or whether it was just that well soundproofed. In my most recent flat, though, it's terrible. You can hear conversations through the floor but what's worse is when people make direct contact with walls/ceilings, like closing curtains or closing doors, it's like they are in your room. And this is despite the building having solid concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick. I do also wonder if it was really an illusion as the first two flats were in noisier areas. But, whatever the reason, it's so hard to tell what it's going to be like before moving in. I wish there standards so you could guarantee what it's going to be like. But until then, I will be seeking detached housing because I just can't stand the noise.
  - Tade0 3y ago
    > And this is despite the building having solid concrete floors that appear to be over a foot thick. The noise is coming in through the holes made to put plumbing - especially district heating. In my current apartment the owner wanted to conceal the piping, so he hid it behind an enclosure made out of plaster with a service hatch. The whole thing is currently a resonance chamber that lets me follow my dowstairs neighbour's conversations.
    - globular-toast 3y ago
      This is my theory with respect to hearing voices from downstairs. It only takes the tiniest little air gap to make a huge difference and I can tell there is one somewhere. I'm not sure about the problem with direct contact with walls/ceilings, though. I suspect this is more down to the construction and the walls/ceiling being directly attached to the concrete shell, or something.
randsp 3y ago
I can confirm this. I am from Spain and I have lived in a few cities all around the country and the lack of soundproofing in every building is a common thing, regardless of town or area, it seems like all buildings from 1970 were built ignoring any sound proof.
pja 3y ago
The Spanish just don’t seem to care about noise at the institutional level. I spent a week in a small Spanish city last year & the local rubbish collection went down the street outside the door, pouring bins full of bottles from the local bars in the back at midnight. Midnight! Just when even the Spanish are trying to get to sleep. Co-incidentally, there was an article in the Spanish national press that week detailing all the ways in which noise in Spanish cities was deleterious to health & wellbeing and asking why no-one ever did anything about it. Constant noise just seems to be accepted as being an inevitable part of life, rather than something to be fixed.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I am living in south of spain and not only spanish do not care about hearing noise, I think they actually do like being noisy and hearing noise. They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. At the beginning I almost felt I should have interrupted couples in the middle of their conversations. I thought they were arguing and were about to become physical against each other, shouting mere inches from each other face with arms throwing all over the place. But no, you quickly realize they are just talking about trivial things, agreeing on something or just complaining about something external. Living there you kind of get used to it.
  - circlefavshape 3y ago
    Chileans have "spaniard" jokes reflecting this (or they used to in the 80s anyway)
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > They are basically shouting all the time instead of talking for example. That's my experience as well. Sometimes it's hard to tell apart if there's a bar brawl happening on the pub down the road or if it's a grou having a good time. It also doesn't help that in both cases Spaniards curse like crazy.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
Maken 3y ago
Noise is not the biggest problem: Cheap apartment buildings from the 60s and 70s has such thin walls what they have no thermal isolation whatsoever. In poor neighborhoods you will see air conditioner machines everywhere because there is no other way to keep the flats livable.
outside1234 3y ago
The Spanish love the noise is my theory. They are a very social people. They probably think of it as comforting versus annoying, and like the person that lives next to the waterfall that can't hear it, it probably fades into the background of their consciousness. (I lived in Spain for two years.)
- switch007 3y ago
  > The Spanish love the noise is my theory Totally. I think to them it represents and demonstrates liberation, freedom, fun, family and community. Loud means fun to them. People complaining about noise are seen as serious party-poopers.
  - anthk 3y ago
    Spaniard here. No, it depends. The Castilles can be pretty silent/quiet/calm compared to Andalusia and the Eastern coast.
    - switch007 3y ago
      Oh that's interesting. Do you (or: do people usually) exclude Madrid from Castilla? That's the only place in Spain I've lived and would not class the people I knew as quiet and calm. But then again it's a melting pot of people from all over Spain, so who knows! And the calmest and quietest people I met were from the east coast :D Definitely agree about Andalusia though
      - anthk 3y ago
        Well, Madrid it's a melting pot and both a sinking hole where lots of population of Castille end there, and their mentality shifts OFC. It's not the same having to live in a small town in Castile of <2000 people vs doing that the literal capital of Spain.
- deleted 3y ago
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- 3y ago
LegitShady 3y ago
>it's maddening, I don't understand it Costs less to build, sells for the same money, more profit made.
Tade0 3y ago
As someone who grew up in a commie block, I think density over a certain point just sucks. Cities in southern Europe are generally denser than what the communists built and to me this is simply too much. I remember staying in Bilbao and the garbage truck waking me up on each garbage day because its sound bounced back and forth between the walls and some genius thought it would be a good idea to have it do its run during the night. Meanwhile back at home if it weren't for a construction site that propped up recently there would have been at least 70 meters to the building next to mine.

Havoc 3y ago

Possibly also cultural. Noticed that some cultures tend to talk louder.

brvsft 3y ago
One time when I was younger, my mom was talking to my grandmother on the phone, in Spanish. I could hear my grandmother on the other end too. They're both yelling. No idea what they were talking about, but I had to ask, something to the effect of, "Mom, are you angry? Why are you and grandma yelling?" Nope, nothing was wrong. That's just how they talk to each other in Spanish. Weird. It also never occurred to me why I didn't notice until whatever age I was, a teenager in high school. It never really occurred to me that they were always 'yelling' while talking to each other until that moment. There is the possibility that they really were upset and yelling, but my mother didn't often keep things from me (at least not as far as I know). I also noticed the yelling afterwards, so I'm confident that was me simply realizing that's how they talked after years of not noticing.

mathieuh 3y ago

I live in northern ireland in an actual house and the walls are thin enough I could dip my bread into my neighbours' soup. It is the number one reason I could never see myself living in an apartment, I'm very sensitive to noise and I get disproportionately angry at even low levels of unwanted noise. I'd be too worried about noise from neighbours.

matsemann 3y ago
I live in a modern apartment in Norway (2019). I guess some of our heat insulation demands make it so that we get extra thick walls and floors, but I've never heard any noise from neighbors. No tv sounds, no stamping feet etc. Maybe twice a year someone drills a hole to mount something on the walls and I hear that for a few minutes. Even have a train passing by outside I can't hear with the windows closed. Point being that it depends. Edit: modern fire safety also dictates a bit how contained each unit should be, I guess.
- kraig911 3y ago
  Norwegians are also some of those most quiet people I've ever met.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    Not disagreeing with your point but I’d like to support what the op said regarding “modern” buildings often having excellent sound deadening. My previous Dutch residence also had those “fake” (non concrete) walls but I couldn’t hear others in their rooms even when they played loud music (and they had different nationalities). But if no effort goes into soundproofing, it can be unsurprisingly pretty bad.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      Yeah, before living where I live now, I lived for a while in an building from the late 1800s. The smaller units were of course added cheaply in modern times, and didn't align well with how it was originally built. One example is the original thick wooden beams that was the floor went through the unit walls. So they same piece of wood I was walking on was also being walked on by the neighbors. That was a great transmission of vibrations, especially when their kid were playing on the floor hehe.

throwaway8877 3y ago

Nowhere else I have seen a conversation to constantly erupt between total strangers than in Spain. They just can't. So I can imagine that this constant involvement in the lives of others might be not a problem for them.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

That's fascinating! I've lived in apartments or condos most of my life and it just wasn't an issue. Possibly structural, possibly cultural - people tended to live a quiet life, unless you were unfortunate and got a real party neighbour. I live in a house right now and in some ways my life is louder (closer to the loud streets, neighbour's barking dogs and lawnmower and snowblower machines and constant little constructions etc).

astronads 3y ago

There’s evidence that constant unwanted noise can negatively impact our health: https://archive.ph/5mvYQ https://archive.ph/5mvYQ (nytimes) I don’t mind visiting cities, but I certainly would never live in one.

rickydroll 3y ago
When I live in rural low noise areas bp is 125/75 range. high noise areas bp is 155/105 range. BP drugs only drop it a little. Unfortunately just bought a house in a rush hour high noise area. wife loved in the house, I loved the visible sky, and we both loved the yard/garden. we saw it on a Sunday (very quiet day. :) Now I have a hard time being outside or taking my scope out for observing. Waiting for a stroke or kidney failure from the high BP.
dijit 3y ago
Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.[0] I live in Malmö on the southern edge of Sweden opposite Copenhagen, it's quieter here (pop: 350,000~) than my friends home village in Northamptonshire (Thrapston; pop: 6,239 as of 2011). This was largely because of the sheer volume of cars on the road, because you essentially have to drive to get anywhere. London is similar, despite not everyone needing a car there is traffic everywhere, you can notice that there's back streets and they tend to be very quiet until there are lots and lots of people, think >200 in a 100sqm area. Having the ability to escape noise is the most important part of noise management. Cities like London have almost no respite from the noise and thus it can be physically draining for many people to experience it. Including myself. [0]: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
- cies 3y ago
  > Cars are loud.[0] Wheels rolling are loud. Also motorbikes. Combustion engines are even louder, and they are also put on bikes. Disillusioned young pedal-metalling in residential neighborhoods are the f*king worst.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Cities are loud, cars are one (major) reason, but not the only one. I lived in a downtown area in a high-rise. 2am in the morning, no cars running but the hummming of all the equipment necessary to operate a city is noise pollution. Next, light pollution.

treespace8 3y ago

I feel that's why many people, especially families prefer detached homes. Sound proofing is guaranteed by the air gap. And if there is a problem with soundproofing you can solve it yourself by making changes. Perhaps row houses are best? Good density, and with a solid concrete wall seperating units to stop sound and fire from spreading?

Scoundreller 3y ago

Dunno about Spain, but in France, a relative in a ?9 story building basically gutted their place. Unlike North American condos, in France they own their windows and can replace them. They also built out a “frame” to install noise insulation on top of the shared walls, losing a bit of interior space (and a huge free bonus to the neighbours). Can’t remember if they did the ceiling too. Unfortunately, no flooring standards are an issue. In my Canadian condo, if you redo the floors, there’s some noise insulating requirement for your choice of flooring as it’s against concrete.

deleted 3y ago

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