Extend a semi but have slightly noisy neighbours?

[myheartisinusa]

A bit of a subjective Q but any thoughts would be welcome.

We have been searching our local area for nearly a year now for a new property. We can find a brilliant house in a mediocre school catchment area but I want a house in a good school catchment. Cat have both without adding an extra 30k on to our budget which is not possible.

DH and I love our house. Its a semi on a popular residential road within good secondary and primary catchments. Its too small though. We want to do a loft and/or rear extension and have had quotes.

One little thing bothering me though - for the last 6 months, every week or a couple of days a week for a few random hours or continuing all through the night ( i was very disturbed until 5am one bad night), DH and i can hear and feel quite a noticeable vibration in our bedroom and DCs bedroom. We think it is a dehumidifier running but maybe the machine is a bit faulty.

It drives me batsh*t crazy (im a bit intolerant) and it only annoys DH a little bit.

We will be ploughing a hefty bit our our own cash and will have to borrow if we do both.

Im feeling so on the fence as i love this house but dont want to spend several tens of thousands if my neighbours buzzing gets worse or starts to affect my enjoyment of my house. DH doesnt think its bad enough to mention. I dont want to start any atmosphere. Neighbours are ok. Polite hello but no more than that and Im fine about that level of contact.

Really not sure what to do.

[myheartisinusa]

Meat to add, can hear the buzzing all though the house and especially in the bedrooms We are 100% positive it is nothing our ours as we turned literally everything off to check where it was coming from.

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

Remember that any neighbour disputes have to be disclosed at time of selling so if you do think you might sell, best to bear that in mind OP.....

I sympathise about the buzzing from next door - I too am intolerant of such things, whereas DH is a bit deaf is not. We've gone from detached to semi back to detached a couple of times and whilst we had no issues at the last house (18" thick stone walls), I made damned sure we bought a detached again this time. For me, if there was the slightest niggling doubt I'd not want to throw money at the place but would prefer to save till I could buy a detached in the right location for schools etc.

[myheartisinusa]

talking to DH now and he says that since december 2014, the buzzing noise has occurred 4 times.

any thoughts?

[stonecircle]

Could you perhaps ask them if they've heard it? Say you can hear a buzzing noise but can't for the life of you work out where it's coming from and you're worried it's a problem with your electrics/heating etc? It might be a good way of opening up a discussion about it. Their response might be a good way of helping you decide what to do. If they realise the noise is coming from them they may be horrified and apologetic. If they aren't at all helpful you may want to reconsider a move!

I do sympathise though - I have a real thing about noise from neighbours. My dream is a detached house but too expensive where we are. We live in a semi which we extended on the side. That means we have another sitting room and bedroom with no neighbours on the other side of the wall!

[MrsFlorrick]

Can't help with buzzing noise.

However you say you love your house.
If you stay and extend, then during this extension programme get the builder to add noise insulating plaster board to all walls adjoins the neighbours. I've done this in the past and it deadened all noise- I didn't want to buy a semi at the time but ended up doing so for financial reasons etc.
never ever had an issue. And it works both ways. I now have two very noisy DC and neighbours always comment on how lovely and quiet they are. If only they knew. DC run around and screech like banshees.

I recommend doing it. Ours was only 20mm thick so doesn't take space away from the room. And works brilliantly. And not expensive to do either.

[Flossiechops]

We have a similar problem with our neighbours but its tv noise and there ALL the time from 7am - 10pm. Retired couple, hard of hearing, shockingly shit thin walls. In our bedroom its even louder, i HATE it and find it very hard to tolerate. I am not a very tolerant person anyway and the woman who lives there has completely blanked us since we moved in, so i resent them even more for the noise and being rude . We only moved last summer and i was very wary of buying a semi for this reason but the previous owners assured me there was no noise (1930s house).

Anyway we are planning an extension next year but i am not willing to pour all that money into it if i just can't tolerate this noise. We are going to try and soundproof the bedroom after the summer and see if that has any effect, If not then i am not spending thousands on it and will have to try and persuade dh to move but he is dead set against it so I kind of have to learn to live with it. If you have only heard that noise 4 times since December then i would say that is not that bad really but i do get how these things grate on your nerves. I so wish we had held out for a detached now.

[Flossiechops]

Ps i haven't felt that we should approach our neighbours as we are probably just as noisy if not noisier with 2 dc. I do think however a buzzing noise with vibration is something to be mentioned especially if its a new noise. Say you are concerned about it and have they noticed it too? We rented a house a few years ago that had a very noisy emersion heater that buzzed all throughout he night, didn't bother dh one jot but drove me nuts. Luckily i found wax earplugs and they changed my life!!

[InsertUsernameHere]

Definitely speak to them about the buzzing noise - speaking to your neighbour is not a dispute. The most innocuous things can buzz! We thought we had a plumbing buzzing noise but dh and I couldn't agree where it was coming from. It turned out it was the plug/transformer to our alarm clock at the head of our bed - so it was to the right of me and left of dh. Solved by turning it off and on again. Luckily we twigged before ripping up the floor boards. (Previous buzzing highlights include cfl lightbulbs; wireless thermostats; children's toys running out of battery squashed in a box). The idea of sound proofing is a good one.

[mandy214]

MrsFlorrick can I ask how much the sound insulation cost? Did you do upstairs and downstairs?

[myheartisinusa]

Brilliant, thanks for the posts. I dont know if i'm being a bit dramatic - may have got carried away.

i suppose ive noticed it now and im waiting and wondering when the noise will keep me awake through the night next (even though its only been once in 6 months), given that we could pour £35k into a loft conversion on its own and £40k into a kitchen extension.

Feeling a bit put out that we've been discussing extending along side looking for houses for the last year and since december, there has been the little infrequent niggle of the random or extended buzzing.

We have just in the last 18 months spent about 4k on paint and plastering the ground floor thinking we might be moving so would feel very upset about soundproofing undoing all that work!

[SolomanDaisy]

Next time it happens, just go and ask them. We had this once when we were living in a flat and I went and asked them. Turned out their heating was broken and they had a fan heater on. From their flat it sounded like nothing, but it must have been vibrating on something that made it sound terrible in our flat. They stood it on a footstool, noise problem solved. It is probably something that simple.

[shovetheholly]

If it were me, and something in my house was driving my neighbours crazy, I would want to know so I could sort it! Which I would do without complaining. However, I'd expect them to ask really nicely and, you know, when I had sorted it out, it would be nice for them to buy me a bottle of wine to say thank you. (A fiver can go a very long way sometimes).

I bet you it's something they've accidentally left on a few nights over the winter - like a dehumidifier.

[nottheparrot]

We had a buzzing noise in a terraced house a few years ago.

It turned out to be an extractor fan in next-doors bathroom (internal bathroom abutting our landing wall). We could hear it in most rooms in the house, but especially in our bedroom. We guessed it was the fan.

We gently mentioned the noise to them and asked them to come in and hear it. They hadn't noticed it had developed a fault.

Oh, the peace when they (very promptly) fixed it!

[MrsFlorrick]

Mandy. From memory it cost £400 per room and was all inclusive with a plaster skim finish on top. You wouldn't need to do that as these boards can work like dry lining board and be taped and jointed which is much cheaper. Obv depends how large your rooms are

[mandy214]

Thank you MrsFlorrick

[TiredOfLife]

They might have a mega flow or similar, in the loft, known to vibrate. Do you know if they had anew central heating system installed in December?

I'm definitely in the camp of noise intolerant, I'd want it resolved or would move.

[myheartisinusa]

it is not a regular daily noise, its an every so often noise. From ecember ive heard it under 10 times (sorry, i know the figure keeps changing but def. under 10 times and its nearly mid april now). However, it can go on for a while.

No, cant see it being a mega flow as one time the noise continued for hours until 4am.

Dont know if they have had a new heating/water system installed.

Maybe I should start keeping a diary even though i havent heard the buzz for a bout 14 days now.

Feel a bit in limbo - do we decorate the whole house and move to a "make do" house or until we have decided if we can live with the intermittent random noise but this will be costly! Estate agent said we could just sell as it is but house is so grim. What to do?! Does that even make sense!?

[Hassled]

Have you actually talked to them about it? Hang fire with the extension etc - first see a) if you can identify the source and b) how helpful the neighbours are in resolving it. Then make a decision. If they say "yes, it's our humidifier and we don't care if it's disturbing you" then you have your answer - but it could be easily resolved.

[myheartisinusa]

Last post a bit confusing.

Basically, our house needs new carpets and walls dealt with as they are so grim but dont want to do that if we do decide that actually next year (after monitoring noise over winter 2015) we do proceed with loft/kitchen building work, we will have wasted lots of money. Think 90s geometric wallpaper on hall, stained doors/woodwork etc.

We are both finding it grim decor wise but i suppose we need to live with that until we decide for once and for all. Everything takes so long.

Dammit, this post is still confusing!!

[myheartisinusa]

If they do say "its a dehumidifer ad we dont care", then we will still be stuck in the semi as we dont have the extra money to move to the right detached house.

We have already told them that we were planning a loft conversion/ extension a few weeks ago and they were lovely and very happy for us (this was after the night in jan when the buzzy noise went on til 4am) Really dont know why i didnt mention it then. Kicking myself!

[Hassled]

It really could be something really simple that they're oblivious to and will happily resolve - don't overthink this until you know the score. And good luck.

[SprungHasSpring]

I bet it's something very simple that they're not aware of. You just need to ask them.

[TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams]

They might switch a tumble drier or washing machine on as they go to bed? It could be reverbing up through the house?

[myheartisinusa]

I managed to nab my neighbours today. I apologised for the noise our baby had been making recently (think teething), said i was so sorry to do mention but i had noticed a buzzy noise across the party wall and wondered if it was a dehumidifier. they said they thought they knew what it was and thanks for telling them.

I dont know if the situation is really resolved but they were gracious about the mention. I think i apologised too much.

Fingers crossed they dont ask us to stop our little baby from crying too loudly when she is left down on the floor for me to do things during the day (gets noisy when not held).