Impact noise,from upstairs...

Paulciob

Hi, I live in a ground-floor apartment, we have a lot of impact noise coming from upstairs neighbors. We own the apartment. Upstairs are renters.

On the lease/rules regarding the floor it states:

"to keep the floors of the Demised Duplex (other than the floors of the kitchen and bathroom) adequately covered with a resilient material or a material with a resilient base the thickness of a material (including any backing) being at least 4.5 mm. For the avoidance of doubt, a material is deemed to be resilient if it returns to its original thickness after it has been compressed. Suitable resilience will also be provided by a floor covering with a weighted impact to sound improvement (A.L.A.L.W) of no less than 17 as calculated ...Any soft covering shall be bonded to the floor base"

We can not hear any audible noise, but we can hear :

Child running through the house...if she wears shoes, i can trace the footsteps. A child is a child, don t have anything against a child running. I have one and I know how kids can be..but, I have to go outside having smoke after smoke as I can t stay inside the apartment anymore.

Phone upstairs left on the wooden floor, we can hear the alarm vibrating in the morning.

Anything dragged, sound amplifies and it s putting a toll on my mental health, lately on my wife's too.

The upstairs floor creaks at 4.20 am when one of the adults wakes up. It s like I bought a house, not an apartment.

Anything dropped, drives me nuts.

We had some disputes in the past, one of the adults is being very aggressive. Long story short, I complained to the landlord, through the designated property manager, and because nothing was improving I had to complain to RTB as the landlord failing to enforce the rules.

Turns out the landlord had no idea of what was going on.

However, he contacted the property management company, following the complaints, and he issued a warning to the tenants, so things calmed down. Happy enough with that.

They have wooden floors, it was t that bad last year, but it's becoming more and more annoying. Speaking with the tenants it s out of the question as one of the adults looks at me like he wants to stab me,after the landlord issued the warning letter.

Any advice on what the above rule state?

The apartment that they rent has hard wooden floors all over the apartment, except for half of the kitchen and the bathroom.

I m looking for an unbiased opinion as to what this rule means.

Thank you.

Deeec

I think by the sounds of it the problem seems to be the wooden floors and not actually what the tenants are doing in their apartment.

I think you need to try to speak to the landord to rectify the issues - no point blaming the tenants as the noises you are are hearing don't seem to be out of the ordinary.

Paulciob

I m not blaming the tenants, what happened before does not have anything to do with this, I assume that they are not aware of what the lease states, I read plenty of posts before posting, some of them state that in certain developments, apartments blocks there is a rule that states that the upper floors, must have carpet laid out, I m not sure what the above paragraph states. What happens I think is that the underlay starts to wear, loose compression properties and the wooden flooring is touching the concrete base.

Deeec

There may possibly be this rule but your problem will be getting it enforced. Your best best is to appeal to the landlord personally to lay carpet - hopefully this will work.

Being honest I can't see this rule being legally enforced if you have to go down this route. I fear it would be a long process.

omega666

As the previous poster said, how would the mgt company even go about enforcement of a rule like that. I'd most say apts have hard wood or laminate flooring installed.

I had a similar problem with noise from a child thumping across the floor from an upstairs apt. Drove me nuts. In the end i just moved and swore I'd never buy a downstairs apt again.

Caranica

There was a poster here before who ended up going to court over noise from the wooden floor above. It was long and costly but iirc they got a judgement against the owner and the management company. There should not be wooden floors in upper apartments.

Aoibhinn41

Hi Paul

You have my absolute sympathy. Recently purchased an apartment, the level of noise from the upstairs apartment is shocking.

My upstairs neighbours are renting and are a lovely family and again it's all impact noise, footsteps, things dropping on floor, child learning to walk with a walker and crashing into everything. All just normal living noises and they are entitled to live but very very difficult for the person in the downstairs apartment.

I did mention it to management co that I thought that it was a wooden floor ...they weren't too interested (lease says same as yours) but it seems like it's a carpet but like someone said above, the underlay is prob worn.

The only thing I would say is if your building is a timber frame, you will hear more as there are no concrete floors bar in the downstairs apartment.

Have you talked to anyone else in your complex? It would be good to know if other downstairs apartments experience the same thing. I did and it varied some ppl said they hear nothing upstairs and others said they hear the same as myself.

For anyone thinking of buying a downstairs apartment, I would recommend trying to stay in one in the same complex via Airbnb and you don't want an apartment where you pretty much have housemates.

Aoibhinn

Yellow_Fern

If you convince them to improve their flooring, see if you can get them to install mass-loaded vinyl under the carpet

Paulciob

Right now, they calmed down, rarely do we have impact noises, but I ll keep any answer in mind. If the problem persists I ll contact the landlord so he can come to see how the noise transmits when they are hoovering. I have a coworker at work who is renting , and the owners of the apartment had to install a carpet because the downstairs renters were complaining about impact noises caused by the rubber bouncing ball in which the child was playing.

Thank you all, and if the problem persists,i ll contact the landlord,and update it here.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118956298#Comment_118956298

I was staying in a friend's duplex in Amsterdam a year or so ago. They owned the ground floor and basement with an apartment over them.

The noise from the apartment upstairs was unreal. Similarly, just a family - no parties or anything like that. But while I was staying there I'd real trouble sleeping due to a baby in the above room crying all night and footsteps and and out of the room.

I'd always mainly associated that kind of a noise problem with living in downstairs apartments - worth remembering when it comes to duplex housing too!