3 ms·

Anecdotally, I've heard the opposite about a lot of the new 5-over-1's going up in the bay area. Several people I know that have moved into recently-built units

Anecdotally, I've heard the opposite about a lot of the new 5-over-1's going up in the bay area. Several people I know that have moved into recently-built units have complained that they can hear far more neighbor noise than they used to in their old units. This also seems to track with my experience -- I live in an older unit and can only hear my adjacent neighbors when they slam their front door, or when they're having a very loud party on a weekend. Yet when I visit friends that live in newer units, sometimes I can hear the neighbors talking at normal conversation levels through the walls. I'm completely speculating, but maybe in newer construction, they can now use insulation materials with a very high R rating that are still fairly thin, so while you get the good thermal insulation, sound transmission is increased because there's less material in the way now. Older buildings that made up for the materials not being as high R-rated tended to do so via volume, which also helped with sound deadening. I think in a lot of places, you also need to have firewalls between units so that fire in one unit doesn't easily spread to others, but I expect those materials have also improved over the decades to where they still provide the same fire protection, but no longer have the mass to offer as much sound deadening.

hadlock 3y ago
A lot of units use 1/2 inch or in many cases less. Upgrading to 5/8" makes a big difference, and installing another 1/2" on top of that gives impressive noise dampening via additional mass. As does fiberglass insulation, and filling gaps around the edges. If you don't have to meet firewall code for certain walls, you can go a lot thinner and noise reduction goes down dramatically. We had an apartment that was converted from condos and noise dampening was significant. Noise was a major consideration (closely after neighborhood) when doing selection.
bombcar 3y ago
There's often not much insulation requirement between units because the entire building envelope is what carries the main insulation, so it's builder's choice if they want to noise insulate above and beyond the firewall requirements. The worst in my experience has been units originally designed for rich quiet people that now are being rented by families.

hadlock 3y ago

A lot of units use 1/2 inch or in many cases less. Upgrading to 5/8" makes a big difference, and installing another 1/2" on top of that gives impressive noise dampening via additional mass. As does fiberglass insulation, and filling gaps around the edges. If you don't have to meet firewall code for certain walls, you can go a lot thinner and noise reduction goes down dramatically. We had an apartment that was converted from condos and noise dampening was significant. Noise was a major consideration (closely after neighborhood) when doing selection.

bombcar 3y ago

There's often not much insulation requirement between units because the entire building envelope is what carries the main insulation, so it's builder's choice if they want to noise insulate above and beyond the firewall requirements. The worst in my experience has been units originally designed for rich quiet people that now are being rented by families.