So I live in an apartment building that’s nearly a century old. I’ve lived in plenty of old buildings, so I understand there’s going to be a certain amount of sound transfer. People walking upstairs, loud tvs, etc.
My upstairs neighbor, I have finally decided, is not in fact the loudest person on earth. Besides the usual footsteps, I can hear every word of her conversations, I know what her cellphone ringtone is, and I finally figured out last night that what sounds like dragging furniture across the floor is probably her pulling out the sleeper sofa. So, you can see from the fact that I now know my upstairs neighbor has a sleeper sofa without ever having met her, there is an unusual amount of sound transfer between our two apartments. (Of course, this is all affected by whether or not I have my TV or AC on, what room I’m in, etc)
I’m not looking for opinions on approaching her. She’s not being loud, the noise stops and starts at reasonable times, and I’m not going to ask her to tiptoe around and talk in whispers. What I’m worried about is how much of what I’m doing she can hear.
Is there an equal amount of sound transfer between apartments that share a floor/ceiling? Or is it worse one way or the other? I just don’t want to worry that I’m annoying her, or worse, that she can hear any nocturnal activities.
I’m glad you could figure out what your neighbor is doing. I just moved into the apartment where I’m at two months ago and *still *can’t figure out what he’s doing up there!
Some days I swear he’s doing Riverdance. Other days it sounds like he’s rollerblading in the kitchen. One noise I think is the dishwasher, but, man, there are some really really strange noises coming in from up there!
I have the same problem, though it’s not an old building (oldER than brand new, built in the 70s, but not old). But we have wood floors and this guy is a stomp walker and inconsiderate asshole.
He’s passed out drunk at 4:30 am on a Friday night/Saturday morning BLASTING his music so loud I could understand the lyrics; called the cops on him after earplugs didn’t work. He had passed out drunk, in his bathroom (locked) while the stereo in the living room played.
He decided that 1am on Wed night/Thurs morning is a great time to play fetch with his dog. In the apartment. With wooden floors. Toss-bounce-bounce-bounce-run-run-skitter-skitter-THUMP repeat. When I went up (in my gorgeous bathrobe), he blinked and just said, “sorry, the dog’s got a lot of energy”. Woop de freaking do! Walk him during the day, asshole.
He decided that last night, 2:30-4am was a great time to just randomly stomp about and open and close his sliding closet door over and over and over again. This is in addition to all of the other times where he seems to go in and out and in and out and in and out from his LOUD PATIO DOOR in the middle of winter around 2am.
I hate that asshole so fucking much. Oh, and he (and others) also decide that apparently a non-basement shared laundry room is cool to use at 11pm. When an apartment (MINE) is right next to it. Hate all of them.
I recently moved into a new place, and it took me most of a Saturday to figure out that the people in the apartment next to mine were playing Guitar Hero. I’ve never played it myself so I had no idea what was going on. It was really strange.
I’m in a 6-story building that was constructed in 1921. I love the place. It’s brick, concrete and plaster. The plaster walls between units are pretty sound-conducting, but hearing neighbors talk, play music, etc really isn’t that annoying.
Part of the reason I selected this building is the concrete floors. I occasionally hear the upstairs neighbor walking around, but it’s very soft and never distracting. The only thing I do hear the guy doing is urinating.
I think he might be diabetic or something, because it seems like he pees a LOT, and I know it’s just him up there! I just try to keep my bathroom door closed most of the way and that seems to dampen the noise enough not to be too gross too regularly.
We had a noise like this coming from the upstairs apartment, and finally realized it was the vacuum cleaner. We couldn’t hear the sound of the vacuum itself, but the little wheels going back and forth on the floor was crystal clear.
Oh yeah I remember the phantom pissing noises. One of my old apartments was very solid, the only noise I ever heard from upstairs was mystifying for months. It was a very faint sort of drone, barely audible even if you were sitting in a silent room. Finally figured out it was the vacuum. But the pissing. Yeah, I could hear it, but only if I were in the bathroom myself. Still pretty weird though.
I’m pretty sure the dragging noise I hear is a sleeper sofa. I would hear it occasionally, usually in the morning or evening, but last night I heard the dragging followed by a squeaking of springs so that’s my best guess.
I’m just glad, given how much I can hear up there, she isn’t louder than she is. Since I can make out her cellphone ringing and things like that, unless she’s got a 4-foot-long Nokia a la Trigger Happy TV, she’s not being unreasonably loud. I am just going to have to listen to everything she’s doing. Mainly the problem now is I am sitting in a mostly silent apartment. Until I get cable and sort through some things so I can charge my mp3 player, I sit around and read a lot of books. So I don’t have anything to listen to except her. I haven’t even been running the AC that much (they sure knew how to build well-shaded and ventilated Florida buildings before the popularity of AC!)
We’re in a 3-storey building built in 1911. Right now we have a lovely woman overhead, but previously we’ve had people who wear high heels and train their yappy dog with a clicker. They also chased each other around, squealing. It was bloody obnoxious.
The area above my living room and bedroom is his kitchen. I’ve surmised that the low rumbling is the dishwasher. The other rolling/clomping noises are a bit harder to figure out. You’d have to hear them. Could be a wheeled kitchen chair, but the amount of time it’s “rolling” around up there defies explanation! LOL
The acoustics in this building are weird. I can’t hear him talking up there, but the stuff that does come through is just bizarre. I’ve heard his vacuum. I don’t actually hear the wheels, I hear the beater bar beating on the bare kitchen floor. Scared the bejezus out of me the first time I heard it! It is *really *loud and at least is a noise I can figure out!
I wish I could record the other sounds for you to hear, as they are really unique. I have a digital recorder, but it’s not good at picking up those kinds of noises. (I’ve tried) I did get the vacuum nose, though.
Whenever possible, I would find apartments on the top floors of buildings precisely for that reason - so nobody would be learning how to tap dance on the wooden floor above me. For the most part, that worked.
I had a couple of downstairs neighbors who seemed to like to play their music full blast at odd hours, during the week. One neighbor was really obnoxious and seemed to like to start playing his music at about 2:00 AM. I asked him at least five times to keep is a little lower in volume, but it didn’t help.
So, one morning at about 8:00 AM, I put my speakers flat on the floor above his apartment and cranked up my music. Mind you, this was one big, scary dude. He came storming up and banged on my door.
“Yes?”
“Turn that crap down!”
I held my own and said, “Do we have a deal?”
He just glared at me and then said, “OK.”
Never had any major problems after than.
That said, you are absolutely correct that some older apartment buildings simply seem to have no sound insulation whatsoever. In NYC, I could hear every word of conversations above and below me through the air vents - and I do mean every word. Made me very cautious about what I said and did in my apartment!
The neighbors upstairs had a cat, with claws, and on that wooden floor it sounded like dwarfs with wooden shoes furiously dashing back and forth to get Sleeping Beauty ready for the ball.
I would have liked an upstairs apt, but I have arthritis in my knee and the only way to get any peace would be to live on the 3rd floor (no elevators). Plus, I can’t afford more than a one bedroom and it seems that they are all basement level.
I purposely had a top floor (2nd story) for my first place exactly to avoid the noise. Not that it really helped – my neighbors there were really noisy.
Which is why I have been trying to find a house to buy. Not easy in my price range and with the requirements I have to meet, but I will keep on looking!!
Not exactly sure of your location, but have you tried looking to see what renting a house would cost? I know here in Las Vegas, you can rent a house often cheaper than renting an apartment - what with the economy and all, many people rent their homes just to keep up mortgage payments. Most only want enough to cover the mortgage payments, which can actually be quite affordable compared to renting an apartment.
Just a thought.
Renting in my area is WAY out of my range. It’s ridiculous! I realized one day it would be cheaper to buy a house in my price range (they are out there, just either not where I want to live or are so run down, I’d never be able to afford to fix them up) than to even rent a 2 bedroom apartment!
I don’t want to move out of my selected area because all my family and friends are in a certain radius. So, that ties my hands a little as well.
We lucked out and got a basement apartment with an upstairs neighbor that basically uses his apartment for storage. I’ve only seen him in person once, and he shows up here for about an hour once a week or so. We don’t have to worry about his noise, or our noise bothering him.
The lady in the apartment on the floor above us, across the hall (about as far away as you can be from my apartment, and still be in the building) is so noisy we can hear her yelling in our apartment. She stampedes up and down the stairs when she comes and goes, always yelling into her cell phone. Her kid is just as bad. Imagine her as a 4 year old. No one in the building likes her, as far as I can tell.
At least my bright spot this week was that the utterly annoying neighbors next door moved out!! I can better handle the guy upstairs (who I’ve been writing about) for the most part now, but the ones who were living next door? They left their door open all the time, the two little kids would be running around in the hall. The kids screamed pretty much all the time (and not play screaming, tantrum screaming). The “adults” were rude with the TV and stereo being on way too loud.
They have been moving out since late last month and they were driving me completely insane!
It’s been a nice day and a half of peace…
And, as another update, the guy upstairs has seemingly been quieter. Who knows, maybe he thought his floor was over *their *heads instead of mine and was trying to get even? I guess we’ll see now that they’ve moved out.
