Can you hear your next door neighbors in a brick house?
I live in a 3 floor brick house which is 110+ years old. I can hear the footsteps of neighbors to my left and the sound of closing/opening their windows. However, I couldnt hear anything from the neighbors at the right side. What could cause this discrepancy? ( hear one side of the neighbors, not both sides) . My suspect is the left side neighbors may knock off their chimney breasts illegally, or removed the sheet rocks to expose bricks…
jserpico
in General Discussion 5 years and 1 month ago
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bklynbabe | 4 years and 11 months ago
We hear the creak creak creak of staircase as people go up and down. We hear voices in the cellar next door too. It’s not quite loud enough to follow the conversation but it makes you look up. You can hear their kids running around as they enter the vestibule. We also hear the subway, about 6 houses away (about 120 feet)! through the basement and 1st floor of it is a quiet day.
I can’t say any of it bothers me, personally. It is a normal occurrence, like the sound of cars going by, and to me, it is. preferable to that frightening dead silence we had last March and April. If my neighbors had loud, drunken arguments, blasted marching band music or had one of those talking Halloween displays, I might mind that.
Guest User | 4 years and 11 months ago
So do I! I thought that’s only my problem as my husband says that he doesn’t hear any of our neighbors, But I can clearly hear those living downstairs, as if they are living in our apartment.
Guest User | 4 years and 11 months ago
Same happens with me. I never hear footsteps or noise of any kind from my neighbors upstairs but i can hear ever single thing happening in the apartment downstairs.
conorl
in General Discussion 5 years ago
Our architect said that in some of these old houses there was a passage between homes on the top floor. This linked all of the houses together so the original builders could pass through easily. In many cases, these passages were not bricked up but rather plastered over. Thus, there is now a weak spot in the fabric of the house that more readily allows noise to pass through.
restorationcontractor | 5 years ago
If is’s a row house maybe your neighbor on the left has their staircase there, other side does not. Sound travels through the staircase opening from bottom to top.
stevecym | 5 years and 1 month ago
the sound travels through the floor joists to the brick and into the floor joists and wall members. in my house, we have plaster on brick. i am not sure why, but we hear nothing of our neighbors. yet i have worked in houses built 10 years later than mine located 4 blocks from mine, and i can hear the conversation the in the living room next door. perhaps they “sticked” the plaster to the brick and the sticking (studs or firring) carry the sound off the floor members?
see what dork says. customers have told me that when they remove plaster, they hear more.. i have had people told me they wish to remove plaster but wont as they wish to maintain the sound barrier.
i just reread your post. stepping on stairs and opening and closing windows definitely create noise which travel through solids – studs and joists.
i am not an expert on this. i learned what i know by speaking to a sound and accoustic engineer. he was located downtown manhattan on like st marks place. i had called him because i had a customer who was having a problem and he spent a lot of tim e explaining all this to me. he did tell me that some reduction in airborne noise can be achieved by overlaying drywall mounted on a sound reducing caulking will work to a degree but the only way to stop noise is to offset studs and get them off the floor joist or somehow isolate them with a “shock absorber”
the conversation was had over 10 years ago and i cannot recall the engineer’s name. but for the benefit of all reading this, if i can locate it, i will post it.
dorkofwindsor | 5 years and 1 month ago
If one neighbor removed the original plaster wall and has either exposed brick or a single sheet of drywall in their house then sound and smell exchange can more easily be experienced. Same if its your house that has the exposed brick or drywall in lieu of old heavy plaster. Many two course brick walls are quite porous.
Arkady | 5 years and 1 month ago
It depends on how they were built. You may share a party wall w/ one neighbor & not the other & there might be just a few courses of brick between you. Alternatively, the stairs of one neighbor may abut your common wall while the other neighbor’s stairs are on the wall away from you.