Building is shaking

Hello everybody, I leave in a brownstone on 14th street in Manhattan. the building shakes quite a lot when a truck/bus is passing and I was wondering if I could do anything about it. Is it common for a brownstone to shake and vibrate? Thank you

arnaudg

in Construction 13 years and 6 months ago

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callalily | 13 years and 6 months ago

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It is not normal. If you are the owner, have a knowledgeable contractor check out the basement structure. You can also pay a building inspector engineer such as Heimer also but they charge $900\. You may have some main beam damage, or the columns aren’t supporting or touching the beams, or the joists don’t reach the floors above. We recently had our columns redone with cement footings and shims put in where parts were not touching. Took about a day and cost $900.

slopemope | 13 years and 6 months ago

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yes, this is common especially if you live on a busy truck route.  been there, done that.  bed would shake at night with none of the positive benefits that usually brings.  the resemblance was more like a small version of the earthquake we had, but i know some other buildings just have vibrations without the bounce.  thank goodness for me this was a lesson i learned in a rental unit.    A floating floor is the only solution of which i am aware.  A new floor that is not connected to the walls is floated on top of various materials ranging from specialty fiberglass pads or newfangled elastomer pads, to full-on large springs, which are carefully chosen based on the floor design (to my knowledge springs are commonly used when floating a full concrete slab, which depending on how bad your problem is you may not need).       The first step is having an acoustics professional determine how much isolation is required, which means some tests.  If you can live with just getting rid of the “feeling” of vibration, and don’t mind the actual sound (or the vibrations in the walls), its probably a bit easier doing floor-only than building heavy isolated walls on top of that floor.     I am hoping you could get away with something like Kinetics KIP pads with a beefy wood floor on top of that.  However i wouldn’t go this alone, i would absolutely find an acoustician who deals with this kind of thing in city buildings exclusively (sorry I don’t have a recommendation for you there).

eman134 | 13 years and 6 months ago

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the building is not about to collapse, but if you find it udiscomfiting..move

arnaudg | 13 years and 6 months ago

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Yes sure it’s not the subway as it occurs whenever a truck drive by. Do you know if it could be dangerous and could the building collapse?

tsarina | 13 years and 6 months ago

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are you sure its not the subway?  Nothing to be done. except move.