Josh95

Brilliant thank you for your advice! You've really helped clear things up. I'll give your suggestions a try and go from there. Thanks again!

Hi, I'm hoping someone can advise if possible please? I've recently moved into a house with a conservatory and noticed that part of the seal between the house and the conservatory roof (I believe this is called flashing but not sure?) Has bent away on one end. From what I've seen online, this flashing should be mortared into the wall. Was this an incorrect installation from the beginning or just a different way of doing it? Any easy fixes for it would be appreciated. Pic attached. Thanks, Josh

I can't believe how much I took my silent neighbours for granted at my mum's house haha! From the action you're taking it definitely sounds like it's one of those problems that grinds you down rather than just getting used to it. Thanks for the advice. I've got thick underlay and carpets in most rooms although it doesn't sound like next door have. I genuinely can't create footsteps as loud as theirs in my own house even if I try. Poor workmanship strikes me as the main problem for my house. 1 exterior wall also needs repointing and multiple burst bricks replacing which seems a bit bad for a 30 year old house!

Yeah thats a very fair point! Definitely helps to have a proper hall with more walls and not just a little box by your front door. My living room is pretty big so one option I have thought about is to put a separate wall up between the living room and stairs to atleast improve things in the room where I spend most of my time. The saving grace bedroom wise is that everything goes gracefully quiet between 8pm and 7am. Trying to watch TV before then is just "bump bump bump bump" every 10 mins which gets rather annoying.

Thanks for the advice. I thought the stairs being in the wall would be a big contributor. In my parents house the stairs are attached to the outside wall and I never heard anything from the neighbours. The joists also ran from front to back instead of into the party wall. Wow that's a lot of wool in your picture! Their actual upstairs walking around is probably worse than them going up and down the stairs to be honest. It's like they don't actually use the downstairs of their house alot of the time. I was thinking that maybe I could fill the inside of the staircase with wool as well as a clip to wall system on the wall running up the stairs and in the cupboard beneath but spending £££s for next to no difference does not sound very appealing. I think I'll just start saving my money to eventually buy them out if they move hahaha!

Sorry to hear that and the advice you were given doesn't sound very reassuring. The easy answer every mentions is "move house" but that's not so easy in practice. Especially if you only afford to play the semi detached lottery again

Thanks, just had a read of that link and it's very interesting! The attention to detail when building these houses appears to be non existent. If the visible part of the wall in the attic is to go off, I imagine the rest of the wall is filled with gaps just like this. Sounds like it's going to be very hard to retrofit without destroying the house in the process :(. Ive enquired with a few companies about getting the cavity filled as I thought this would be a cheap and easier place to start for atleast some levelling of sound dampening. Unfortunately nobody seems to want to touch it with it being a party wall. Soundproofing companies just keep mentioning removing dot and dab and attaching a clip to wall system with rockwool, techsound, soundplank and acoustic board but they never mention gaps, or the floor void so definitely useful information thank you! I have to admit, the sound does seem like it coming directly through the wall (as if it's a piece of cardboard) alot of the time rather than it sounding like it coming from edge etc but it's hard to work out.

Yeah every wall in the house is dot and dabbed (well the external ones and party). Floor joists run into the party wall. From when I had a floorboard up (on the other side of the house) I did shine a torch across and looked to the party wall from a distance and couldn't see any obvious gaps around the joist I could see going into the wall. Not entirely sure what a trimmer is but stairs are on the party wall.

Glad to hear you've had success! It was built in 1990 and from a small gap in the mortar I can just about see into the cavity which seems to be empty. Seems to be the whole wall. If they're in their living room for example the noise of them talking at times seems to sound right along the wall like an echoing effect. Erm it's usually impact noise from footfall or conversation. Weirdly never hear TV, music, washer, toilet flushing or anything like that which I've seen people complain about. I don't think they're the most considerate which doesn't exactly help. May I ask what kind of noise you were dealing with and has it gone completely or just reduced. 10cm seems a lot of space to lose of the staircase. Are your stairs on the party wall? Thanks, Josh

Hi everyone, fairly new to the forum and just looking for some advice in relation to soundproofing the party wall on a semi detached house. I've consulted with soundproofing companies online, I'm just wondering if anyone has had real world success with the sound proofing of a party wall? I'm cautious of potentially spending thousands for little to no gain. I've recently moved in to my first house on my own and immediately noticed I could hear the neighbours voices and footsteps on the stairs and upstairs footfall (especially when their kids are running around upstairs). From looking in the attic I can see that the party wall is of a breeze block construction with a cavity. The wall has noticeably bad mortar joints in the attic atleast (pic attached) which I'm guessing could be a major contributor to the sound transfer if the wall is like this throughout. All of the walls in the house are also dot and dabbed. Annoyingly the staircase goes up from the living room along the party wall so I'm cautious that losing between 6-8cm on the wall of the stairs could be quite intruding. So on the party wall I have the hall, living room running up to the landing, the box room, dining room and bathroom. Unfortunately the dining room and bathroom would be far too Intrusive to get done as they've fairly newly decorated with the bathroom suite and tiles, cupboards etc. I've lived in a semi my whole life and Never experienced anything like this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. If anyone's soundproofed a similar layout? Thanks, Josh