Urgent Soundproofing advice needed!!

[NewMum1981]

My first post, hopefully of many, but I'm reaching out Mumsnetters and really hoping someone can advise. My partner and I moved house just before our daughter was born (5 weeks old and what a joy she is!) to what we thought was a lovely Victorian flat in E London. To our absolute horror the flat upstairs which was sold at the same time has new owners who have taken up all the carpet and have a one year old running around all day every day. We can hear every single footstep, conversation, toilet sound, it's driving us to the point of total despair and we are not able to sleep at all.

Long story short they own the freehold and are point blank refusing to do anything about it. (no carpet stipulation in lease either)

We have had lots of soundproofing quotes ranging from 1-2K per room, and we can only lose 4 inches in height or it will just be like living in a cave.
Has anyone had soundproofing done from below i.e take ceilings down have genie clips or acoustic hangers put in etc and db boards rockwool etc

Ive figured out cost of moving is around 15-25K, really don't want ti throw nearly 10K away to get flat done and discover it dosen't work.

Has anyone had this done ? And did it work ?

Many many thanks

You have my real sympathy. When we moved into our last flat, we discovered the very next morning our neighbour's propensity to play a certain song over-and-over-and-over again at top volume. There may as well have been no walls between our flats. Add her psycho tendencies and four children under 4 and we were very quickly regretting our new purchase. It was a horrible, miserable experience and in the end we sold up after about 18 months (best decision I've ever made).

In the meantime, we did try soundproofing all the walls shared with her flat. I think it made some difference, but not a lot and it didn't solve the problem completely in any way. The issue being that while you can soundproof the shared walls/ ceilings, the sound will still find some way of travelling. So in our case, the sound could still get through via the ceilings/ floors and in your case, the sound will still come down the walls. Although, maybe it's slightly different with the specific problem of footfall on wooden floors which, unlike music and screaming kids/ mum is less likely to travel through e.g. windows, etc etc.

So, no real answer to your question. I think the only way to know if it makes a difference is to do it, but it's a lot of money to spend on the off-chance that, as in our case, it only makes a minimal improvement. Really the best solution is to reach some sort of neighbourly compromise. You say 'they point blank refuse to do anything'... How/ what have you asked them? Fair enough if they don't want to put down carpets, but might they put down some rugs? Or could you ask them to try not to wear outdoor shoes inside (buy them all slippers as a present!)? Have you invited one of them downstairs to show them how noisy it is, from your perspective, when the toddler is running around playing? Etc. Although I know, again from experience, that an attempt to find a reasonable solution only works if you're dealing with reasonable people.

nothing to advise but wanted to say that sounds awful.

i hope you dont get any replies on the lines of "well you must have known there'd be noise from all round you if you moved into a flat" or other unhelpful responses.

Good luck.

Total sympathy - our old flat had similar and we had noisy (night owl) youngsters above us! From what I've read (extensively) sound proofing will have minimal impact.

It might be worth talking to them to try to temper the worst bits, and also giving it some time to see if you could adjust to some noise of this type.

It's a problem of living in London with silly house prices.

Oh blimey what a nightmare! I don't have anything useful to offer really. We had been looking into soundproofing as we have issues with our party wall and the neighbours having their tv on REALLY loud. Sadly i am yet to find a solution that could give us the answer to the problem. We have decided that we will wait a couple of years and then move again. Truthfully i think accepting it or moving are probably your only real choices.

Op just to clarify you've spoken to your neighbours and they refuse to put some carpeting down? Knowing how loud they are?

Well i would wait until their dc is asleep and put on some music, not stupidly loud, but just to let them fully appreciate how the sound is travelling through the flats.

That is a horrible situation you are in