Why Isn’t Soundproofing in Apartment Buildings Better?
2019 April 29
This is a quick little article about something that’s been on my mind off-and-on for the last few years.
Living Below a Stomper
It started when I lived in my first apartment in Denver, which wasn’t in the most family-friendly neighborhood, but wasn’t a horrible nightmare. It was a cool neighborhood, and I had a relatively cheap apartment for the area.
One of the main for it being cheaper was because of the nearby Church Nightclub which I’ve mentioned before.
However, a few months into living there, I found the real reason for it being so cheap, and that would be the shoddy soundproofing it has between floors.
When I first moved in, I had a normal upstairs neighbor. I never met them, but I knew they were there because I would hear the occasional dropping of random objects (which didn’t bother me, of course – these things happen).
But eventually I got a new upstairs neighbor, and they were a stomper.
Walking Differently
Let me get one thing clear. Stomping has absolutely nothing to do with weight. It has everything to do with how people put their foot down. I’ve met people who were fully grown adults that weighed less than 100 lbs (~45 kg) that sounded like an elephant stampede and vice versa. In fact, I weigh ~174 lbs (~79 kg) last time I checked (on August 26, 2018… I keep a weight tracking spreadsheet… don’t ask), and when I walk, I might as well be a ghost. Ask anyone and everyone I’ve accidentally scared the bejeezuz out of by walking up to them then talking when they were looking in a different direction.
I think part of this has to do with being in marching band in high school, where you’re trained to roll your feet from heel to toe to make walking as smooth as possible, transferring as much energy into forward momentum as you can. My friend, Kevin, who was in the same high school marching band as me, one time even commented, “I had no idea marching band was going to turn me into a ninja,” after he accidentally scared his roommates half-to-death on multiple occasions doing the same thing as me.
So, point made. If you disagree, conduct a 1-year, double-blind scientific study to prove me wrong, then don’t let me know in the comments because I don’t care.
Why Does This Bother Me So Much?
Back to my first Denver apartment, sometime in the Summer of 2017, the new neighbor moved in and they made me well aware. The problem with constant, upstairs footsteps isn’t the noise itself, but the psychology of it.
Other random, annoying noises can happen, such as:
- a baby crying
- an ice maker dropping ice
- someone sneezing or coughing a lot (like when they’re sick)
…but these noises don’t bother me that much. I might feel slightly annoyed, but that will be the extent of it.
However, if it’s a random, annoying noise that can be easily prevented, such as:
- someone chewing with their mouth open
- the constant clicking of a pen
- an upstairs neighbor stomping all over the floor
…these are the noises to drive a perfectly patient, sane person over the edge of a cliff, because they don’t need to happen, yet someone is making you suffer through it anyway. In the case of the upstairs neighbor you’re (almost) literally being walked all over on all hours of the day.
One last touch to add to the circumstance is that you can’t relax as much during the quiet times because you’re fully literally waiting for the other foot to drop.
Apparently, the Only Solution is to Move
I tolerated it for about a week, hoping against hope that it would stop, or that I would get used to it, but the new neighbor was here to clomp, stomp and stay, and this is the kind of noise that you don’t get used to. I emailed the apartment manager to see what was going on, and if there was anything to prevent it. She replied that the new neighbor had the whole family over to help them move in but that they would be gone in a week and that the noise should go down then. So I waited and hoped. The noise did not go down.
For anyone thinking that I may have been dramatic about this, I guarantee you’ve never been in this situation, but also, let’s say that I would use my earplugs in combination with my noise-cancelling headphones and I could still hear when the neighbor walked. It often woke me up in the middle of the night and I started to see a huge quality-of-life decline. I was losing sleep, becoming more frustrated, not doing as well in my work, etc.
And anyone who says that I should have talked to the neighbor and introduced myself, imagine how well that would go. What if you got a random knock on the door because the way that you exist in your day-to-day bothers the hell out of someone to the point where they’re going insane? Rugs work a bit, but they only block a little bit of this kind of noise. The only other option is to change a fully-ingrained subconscious behavior, but more on that later. (Maybe you could convince them to join a marching band, but then you’d have to go with them and start waking up at 5 AM for practice and what-not and it’s a whole big thing.)
In the fall of 2017, I moved out of the apartment and got a much nicer one with high ceilings and concrete floors. It was paradise compared to the old place. Every once in a while we could hear the upstairs neighbor walking with what was probably high heels, but it was always temporary and very faint. Those were the days…
The New Apartment Building in Argentina
Now, living in Argentina with Mariangela, we live in a fairly nice apartment, which was built only 2 years ago. Mariangela is the first person to live in this particular room. But it was built so cheaply. Here are some examples of the problems this place has:
- When it rains, there’s a good chance that the balcony will leak water onto the floor inside, so we can never put anything valuable anywhere near the balcony door.
- The pipes in the wall above us started leaking a few months ago and now there is water damage on that part of the wall / behind the kitchen cupboards
- The downstairs neighbor is constantly asking us if we’re throwing out water on our balcony (we’ve never done that) because there’s constantly water dripping onto her balcony and into her room
- One of the flush functions on the toilet is broken
- The kitchen sink has apparently broken and sprayed water twice before I got there (a lot of these issues seem to deal with water)
- And, if you’ve been reading this article, you probably already guessed that the soundproofing is basically non-existent
I could tolerate the apartment a lot more if it wasn’t for the absolutely horrendous soundproofing. We live next to a busy street, and at first it gave me a headache with the sound of constant motors, but I did eventually get used to that.
Even the fact that we know our next-door neighbor’s Netflix tastes (she’s into a lot of drama shows and also tends to watch a lot of Friends) doesn’t bother me that much.
But the apartment above us…
This is a little bit different, because the apartment above us is an Airbnb, and the owner is pretty nice. We’ve asked about the issues with noise before, and he’s even put down a few rugs under moveable furniture like the chairs. But at random, for sometimes weeks at a time, we get stompers.
There was a guest above us who left about a week ago. They stayed for about two weeks, and they were the stompiest person to stay there yet. They stomped hard and walked frequently. Also, they walked at all hours of the night, sometimes waking us up at around 3 or 4 AM (sound familiar?).
They’re gone now, gracias a Dios. There’s now a group of people here, none of which are very loud stompers , but they have dogs, big ones… and it actually doesn’t bother me when I hear their claws clacking around the floor or when they chew on a bone, or when they get zoomies.
It’s just as noticeable as stomping, but like I said earlier, it’s a dog, and the noise isn’t as preventable, therefore it slightly annoys me, but it doesn’t frustrate me. It’s weird, I know.
Who’s to Blame?
But maybe I’m putting the onus too much on these stompers. I don’t truly blame them. After all, I’m pretty sure 99% of stompers don’t even realize that they’re stompers, and if they did, they would change it if they easily could. The way people walk isn’t something that most people think about on a regular basis, if not ever. Unlearning a trait so ingrained in our daily lives as walking is not an easy feat.
So, if it’s unreasonable to ask people to change the way they walk, what’s the point of all my complaining? Is this just an unsolvable part of life that we sometimes have to deal with?
No!
As far as I’m concerned, the issue has nothing to do with stompers themselves, but because construction companies are incentivized to build things as cheaply as possible while staying within the confines of the law (I’m not blaming the construction companies either, they’re just following the rules of economics and trying to stay in business).
A lot of readers will probably have an issue with what I’m about to say next, but I think we need to improve regulations for these kinds of things so that it’s a requirement to build things better, especially in new buildings if not retro-fitting old buildings.
And Now, Here’s a Dumpster Fire
I’m going to show something a little embarrassing that I posted on city-data.com after I googled this subject when I was being driven insane by the aforementioned guest who sounded like they had anger issues everywhere they walked.
If it’s any consolation to anyone living below and inconsiderate stomper, I’ve heard that people who walk and produce excess noise are more likely to have knee problems later in life. Is that true? I actually have no idea but sometimes it’s the last thought that keeps me from going ****ing bonkers when our upstairs neighbor wakes us up at 3:00 AM.
-SpencerFrancis (obviously me)
Seriously though, there should be a soundproofing law for new apartment buildings (as restructuring old ones may be a little too cost-prohibitive). It’s unfair that people should have to suffer because other people never learned to walk.
City-Data post about this topic
Obviously I had a little misdirected anger at upstairs neighbors in general, but the point I make in the second paragraph I still agree with, maybe stated with a little more nuance.
And then someone condescendingly replied:
So you want government to mandate how inside building is sound proofed [sic] because you feel that it’s unfair to other people that live in shared building? Good luck with that, i [sic] am not seeing that happening anytime [sic] soon. If you don’t like the noise, get your own house.
-looker009
City-Data post about this topic
I saw that and I felt an immediate need to respond and try to “win” this argument on the Internet. But we all know how well that works. I started typing out a response, but changed my mind and made this “quick” blog post instead.
So I figured I had a better opportunity to be more nuanced and get my thoughts out in a better environment, this blog, with readers who are much more amazing, smart, good-looking, and all-around fantastic people.
Here’s what I felt like saying as a reply:
Actually yeah. Is it too much to ask for society to progress and for our buildings to get better? Just because sh*tty things happen now doesn’t mean they have to happen in the future.
I’m not asking for something that unreasonable or wishing on some far-off technology. This level of soundproofing exists, but the only reason many new buildings don’t have it is because contractors are incentivized to get away with building as cheaply as possible within the confines of the law.
-SpencerFrancis
Unposted response to looker009 this City-Data forum
The full draft was a bit longer, but I’ll paraphrase the rest.
I took their quote and put it in some different contexts:
- 1910’s: “So you want the government to mandate how a building is fireproofed because you feel it’s unfair that people die when other people leave a stove unattended in a shared building? Good luck with that, I am not seeing that happening any time soon. If you don’t like dying in a fire, build your own fire escape.”
- 1920’s: “So you want the government to mandate how a community has electricity because you feel it’s unfair that you don’t have light after evening hours? Good luck with that, I am not seeing that happening any time soon. If you don’t like not being able to read after hours, buy a bunch of candles.”
- 1970’s: “So you want the government to mandate safety requirements in a car because you feel it’s unfair that you might die because your steering wheel will crush your spine if someone crashes into your car? Good luck with that, I am not seeing that happening any time soon. If you don’t like the prospect of dying in a low-speed car accident, spend a year’s worth of your salary on a car that has an airbag.”
- 1990’s: “So you want the government to mandate how a neighborhood gets the Internet because you feel it’s unfair that you don’t get to surf the web at your leisure? Good luck with that, I am not seeing that happening any time soon. If you don’t like not being able to surf the world wide web from your home, move to a wealthier neighborhood.”
Obviously this type of response wasn’t going to be productive. Even if I had a more well-reasoned, though-out, nuanced response, blog debating against a stranger on the Internet never goes anywhere but down.
But I think readers of my own personal blog are more likely to either agree with me, or disagree and not be condescending about it (if you disagree this time, actually feel free to respectfully write so in the comments as I truly do care about this point).
One Last Point
I know the main counterargument is that requiring a better level of soundproofing in new buildings will raise the cost of living, but that would only be temporary until it becomes the norm, and it’s an investment that pays off sooner than you’d think.
When modern indoor plumbing was introduced, it raised the cost of apartments and houses that had indoor plumbing, but once it became the norm, the improvements to health, cleanliness and overall quality of life made it so that the ‘investment’ of adding indoor plumbing to virtually all buildings in the world ‘paid off’ in indirect ways. A hospital bill for a minor, unclean cut is much more expensive than a few more cents on the water bill to properly clean it before infection sets in, and that’s just one small example. I don’t think think I need to explain the finer points about the benefits of indoor plumbing.
Modern soundproofing in an apartment isn’t as dramatic or necessary of an improvement as the introduction of indoor plumbing, but if it’s an improvement, why not do so? People who live in non-luxury apartments will have better quality of life, they’ll likely be able to work more productively with better sleep, have more privacy, and so on.
And if you say “there are more pressing issues in the world than this minor thing,” you’re right, there’s starvation and global warming and such. But there is something that I just now decided to call the problem-to-solution effort ratio. There may already be a name for this, and if there is, let me know so I stop sounding like an idiot. There are big problems, and there are small problems. But the solutions to these problems are also big and small, and the sizes don’t always correlate. A small solution to a big problem should obviously be done ASAP (e.g. using penicillin to cure a deadly bacterial infection). A big solution to a small problem should probably be ignored or put off until later, or left as a luxury solution if you’ve got the money (e.g. most Internet-of-things products). And big solutions to big problems (e.g. stopping global warming) theoretically have the same problem-to-solution effort ratio as small solutions to small problems (e.g. drinking some water because you’re thirsty).
(The exact size of problems and solutions isn’t exactly measurable, so don’t @ me if you think I’m reducing the size of the issue of global warming and its solution to being a bit parched. If that’s what you pick up from this, you’re bad at interpreting meaning. Global warming is obviously one of the biggest issues of our day and age and needs much more attention than it gets.)
But back to the soundproofing apartments thing. If you don’t think the problem-to-solution effort ratio is big enough to warrant a conversation about it, or implement a solution for it, I think this problem is bigger than most people assume. And the solution is soundproofing our buildings. I know it’s not easy, otherwise I would have done it myself, but in the grand scheme of things, it is so easy, it’s ridiculous we’re not doing it all the time.
Keep on keeping on Spencer!!!