Subway Vibration
A friend of mine has moved into a new apartment (new construction)and noticed (after the fact) a bit of subway noise/vibration. The apartment doesn’t shake and it is not audible enough to disturb conversation. However, if you are sitting in the room without any radio or television on, you will notice the trains pass underneath…
A friend of mine has moved into a new apartment (new construction)and noticed (after the fact) a bit of subway noise/vibration. The apartment doesn’t shake and it is not audible enough to disturb conversation. However, if you are sitting in the room without any radio or television on, you will notice the trains pass underneath every 4-5 minutes (sounds like an AC’s white noise except it starts and stops every 4-5 minutes making it not a white noise). Has anyone dealt with this type of noise with insulation or noise reduction devices? She is on the fourth floor btw.
Jenny,
“She is on the fourth floor btw.”
Jenny, your friend may be just one floor too low to escape the train vibrations 🙂
Here is a quote about *wine and the fifth floor* — a New York hotel story that may amuse your friend:
” … the Waldorf Astoria is built above the railway tracks of the nearby Grand Central and the hotel stores its wine on the 5th storey so as to escape the train vibrations.” (“New York”, by Travel Bugs, 1994)
Perhaps the people at the Waldorf are onto something!
sounds like the woody allen movie where he lived under the coney island rollercoaster.. at least he did not call it a “luxury condo”
Maybe they can call 311 and get them to stop the trains.
Carnegie Hall was notorious for feeling the subway underneath.
” … it could have been much much worse believe me.”
Yes, here is only one of the many things that could have been worse —
Wasn’t one reason the fountain in the middle of the Grand Army Plaza was redone is that it was *sinking* into the subway below?
🙂
I grew up in a garden apartment in the Heights, with the 4/5 right underneath, moved when I was about 14. Years later I moved back in. 3 years after that I started dating my, now, wife. Her first comment the first time she came over “is that the train I feel underneath?”
In all those years growing up and the 5 or so years I lived there after I moved back before we met, I never noticed it.
Of course after she mentioned it I noticed it all the time….
… but it wasn’t a big deal. I am surprised you hear it on the 4th floor though…
he/she needs to bond with the trains and feel that they are “my trains”.
Late to this thread – my $0.02 – easiest way to ignore the rumble is to play music and to make sure all the things that could rattle from any vibration are protected, by putting soft liners in the silverware drawer, etc.
I live a block from a subway tunnel and only notice the noise late at night when nothing else makes a sound. If I have music going, I never hear the trains. If your friend buys a white-noise machine and the sound of the trains is truly as quiet as an a/c, white noise should cancel it out.
I do know someone with a Soho loft who disliked the vibration and noise from the trains and consulted an engineer about how to make it go away. The engineer came up with a complicated scheme involving suspended floors, rubber insulation and something-or-other with the building’s old cast-iron support columns. Price tag was thousands and thousands.
You guys should move! Lol!
Thanks for these comments. I’m sure she will feel better reading these shared complaints. I’m sure she has a little anxiety being a new home owner and finding a flaw in her new diggs.