Fed up with thin party walls in my semi detached house.

[Tolkienista]

Just a bit of a rant.......not expecting much sympathy, but want to get this out for discussion. New neighbour moved in.last week after blitzing his new property over 5 wks, (that's another story, it was a difficult time as the builders worked their way round the house starting before 8am) but it's mainly done now.
He's got three teenage children from his marriage, they're currently with him for the coming week starting this evening, then.back to their mother.

I know the walls are thin, my last neighbour had dementia and used to get up in the middle of the night and put her tv on full vo!ume.
Already his tv is coming straight through the wall, the kids are pretty.loud but that's what kids do when there's three of them together.

Am I just unlucky with properties as I've had these issues before? Or do others feel the same. The house was built in 1961 and everything comes through the walls. I live on my own , so I guess I'm hyper sensitive to noise.
Any thoughts?

Have you thought about having sound insulation attached to the wall with that neighbour? Might be worth pricing if it would improve your quality of life in the house.

The walls are quite thin in our semi detached. We were so lucky to have elderly neighbours for over a decade who were very quiet and thoughtful. However, we now have a young couple and when they've had a few drinks, they are quite loud. We also hear sneezing, coughing and low level music. I'm dreading a family moving in in the future as it's a rental property now.

All I can suggest is things we have done to minimise the annoyance! Firstly, we put a fish tank along the main living room wall. The noise of the bubbles definitely distracts from the noises next door. We bought a sound bar for the tv so that we could direct the sound away from the wall, meaning we can have it on a bit louder. We have a Google nest in the bedroom so we can have music playing at bedtime to muffle any snoring that can be heard!!

But honestly, you have my sympathy and if I ever move house, I will never buy anything other than detached.

Our wall are so thin in our 1940s semi, can hear them plugging things in on the joining wall but worse than that the constant f-ing and blinding, it’s relentless!!! Shouting, swearing, arguing, kids crying. I live in a pretty conflict free house so it’s awful to have this intruding on our family.

My walls are fare too thin too. Why do they build houses like this?

We're lucky that the walls in our 1940's mid-terrace are thick and soundproof, it's one of the things that makes me nervous about moving.

Are you renting or do you own the house?

I would look into sound proofing. You could get the party walls done - it would be a few thousand, which is a lot but cheaper than moving.

Thanks for all your replies so far, very interesting reading.......including hearing sneezing and coughing, yep I've heard both of those through the walls since I moved into this house in 2019.
It is my house, not rented.

I think my main rant is the quality of build in British houses. I have considered noise insulation, but you have to lose a certain depth of the wall I believe to achieve good results.

The trend for bare walls and hard floors makes noise worse too. Carpet, wallpaper, bookshelves and pictures all help deaden noise.

I have the same problem OP. Family with small children next door to me. I hear everything from light switches that sound like a small hammer hitting the wall to their baby screaming all the time. It wears you down. Trouble is, soundproofing walls won't always work as noise travels through things like floor joists as well. I love my house but I hate the fact that the adjoining walls are so pathetically thin. My next move will definitely be to a detached house!

Rollercoaster, yes. That was the other issue. When this family moved in they ripped out the carpets upstairs. This really increased the volume of noise I can hear from their side

I've spent a lot of money on various soundproofing and it doesn't bloody work 😭

We had this problem for 16 years, I swear our party wall was made of cardboard.
We got round it by…moving to a detached. Absolute magic, hear nothing now!!!