Living in a terrace house

BallistixOnZ490 said:
On this topic, are detached houses still better if they are built as close together as they can fit them? Normally now there is only the tiniest walk way between each such house, so its paying for a double wall separation vs a single one.
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Yes. Sound just doesn't travel through walls, it travels along walls. By not having any walls joined to your neighbours you have no way for noise to travel that way. You decouple not just air noise, but flanking and impact noise as well.
 
I rented a terraced for a few months when I first moved out of my mums in 2010. The house itself was really nice, it had been renovated, but man. I lived next door to a woman who had a different bloke around every night, and the noise was crazy. She also had some weird sleep issue where she'd have to have about 18 alarm clocks go off sequentially with about a five-minute gap between them, at about 5:30am. It got to about the 12th alarm before she woke up and turned them off. Absolute hell.

Then I have friends who live in terraced houses, also really nice, and you never hear a peep from the neighbours.

@Amplus - where abouts in Manc do you live?
 
I suppose you're doubling your chances of noise issues in a terrace but even in a semi detached, things can be noisy.

Our first house was a new build semi detached and it was fine as all the areas along the party wall were rooms that were used less frequently (stairs / downstairs toilet / guest bedroom).

Since we've moved into a 1959s semi, noise has become an issue. The living room / kitchen and main bedrooms are all directly next to the same rooms in the adjoining house so sounds travels much easier. Frustratingly, we are the noisy ones in this instance. Our neighbour is probably 70+ and lives alone so she barely makes any noise, however she has mentioned a few times that she can hear lots of noise through the wall.

I wouldn't class us as as a noisy family but when you've got a 4 year old and two dogs who like to bark at the postman it can be difficult to be quiet all the time.

I always find it fascinating when people say new build are noisier than older house when my experience has been the complete opposite. New builds tend to be designed in a much more logical way where the party wall has less activity by it.
 
My previous property was a 2 bedroom mid terraced house and every morning my neighbours daughter would cry in the morning whilst brushing her teeth. However, my other neighbour would often do weird things around 9-10pm like hammering nails etc directly next to our bedroom. As a result when i finally moved i only wanted Semi or Detached.
 
My top tip (if you can afford it) that has been menrioned on here.... Never buy a house you can't walk all the way around and god is that true.

Me and my gfs first house was a 2 bed semi in a nice location with neighbours who had been there years on a cul de sac.
The house next door I checked hadn't been sold for years.
Neighbour was fantastic, like minded quiet family person but the walls were shocking for any sound.
3 years later my heart sank as she moved out and I new what was coming. Another renter but this time a single mum non working chav with children that should have been kept in a zoo, or put down.

I can't describe how bad these scum bags were, banging all night shouting, c word from the kid to the mother, pulling down fences ect they ruined the whole street.

I sold as soon as I could for a lower price to get away and we moved into a detached in a village.

That was the best 50k extra I borrowed from the Bank in my life.

House is a game changer and we havnt looked back.
You need luck with neighbours and I'd rather jam my gonads in a vice then ever live attached to anyone else again.
 
DanTheMan said:
I always find it fascinating when people say new build are noisier than older house when my experience has been the complete opposite. New builds tend to be designed in a much more logical way where the party wall has less activity by it.
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I think it's a bit like a bell curve. Get an really old house with solid stone walls then sound transmission can be minimal, same with victorian terraces, then post WW2 they seemed to be much worse built with thinner walls and less thought out layouts and then now newer builds have much more insulation and regulations and as such don't transmit much sound.
 
I feel quite lucky reading this as we recently moved into a semi detached (original part of house that's attached is victorian brick). Neighbours on both sides seem to be really nice people, and not loud at all. We do not hear a peep from the other side of the semi detached.

You can still be unlucky with your detached house too. Infact the main noise we hear is a fairly persistant barking dog from a few doors down.
 
shiver said:
I feel quite lucky reading this as we recently moved into a semi detached (original part of house that's attached is victorian brick). Neighbours on both sides seem to be really nice people, and not loud at all. We do not hear a peep from the other side of the semi detached.

You can still be unlucky with your detached house too. Infact the main noise we hear is a fairly persistant barking dog from a few doors down.
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With a dog you can close the windows and turn the TV up and the noise is gone.
When's it's coming through your wall and bleeding into evert room in the house is a different matter.
Ideally a detached in the middle of nowhere would be my dream but realistically detached usually is premium living IMO.
 
We're in an end of terrace, it's fine other than people running up stairs or the dog scratching his head in the morning :p
 
Our first house was a terrace back in 1980 and we had it for 3 years - never again.

One of my recurring dreams even after 38 years is that my wife swaps our house for that terrace house and I just keep asking her 'Why?'.
 
Amplus said:
Been in my first home for 3 years now. It's a beautiful Victorian terrace close to 2 train stations to get to Manchester in 15 minutes. Was looking to sell this year to move to a nicer area but think we are going to wait it out another year.

As much as I love the house to look at and the old antique furniture looks great in the house, having never lived in a terrace I would advise against buying one again.

Worst thing about a terrace is it feels like I'm living with other people. The walls are paper thin and we can hear everything, from low level talking to the kids running upstairs next door. Paranoid to talk in my own house in case the neighbors can hear what I'm saying. The narrow kitchen and stairwell can feel claustrophobic as well. Parking is a pain in the arse as well.

Would never live in a terrace again despite how much character they have.

What's the experience of living in a terrace been for people?
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I grew up in a terrace house. Built in the early 50s. The walls between the houses were about a foot thick, made of concrete so noise pretty much got muted.

Heating was a good thing though. Once those thick walls got warm they were like storage heaters & we were a middle terrace so heat from the neighbours kept it toasty.
 
Martynt74 said:
I think it's a bit like a bell curve. Get an really old house with solid stone walls then sound transmission can be minimal, same with victorian terraces, then post WW2 they seemed to be much worse built with thinner walls and less thought out layouts and then now newer builds have much more insulation and regulations and as such don't transmit much sound.
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I think that probably rings true. It doesn't help that we're on a slope so there's a huge void under the floor downstairs where sound seems to travel.

I never really thought about noise and build quality when we moved as I'd not had any problems before. Its definitely something that would be top of the list when we next move.

I'd move to a nice quiet area further away from Manchester in a heartbeat but the wife wants to stay close to the city.
 
Definitely detached and no shared borders is the dream, as I've said before (I think) had hell on earth in a west Yorkshire semi but that paid for a move here for cash, semi again but bedrooms and bathroom on party wall at both sides, so massive buffer zone, can't hear anything, nice neighbour, maybe can hear grandkids door slams when they call but muted and not a problem, if her dog barks when she's out I have a key to her house to let it (her) mooch outside.
 
1930s and cheaply built here. I can occasionally hear muted baby crying, and i know when they flush their toilet if i'm also in my bathroom (rooms adjoining). Other than that, nary a peep
 
Semple said:
Exactly this.

When you consider a lot of houses even built from 1920s-1980s probably only had parking for a single car, because that's all people had in those days. Whereas nowadays you'll find a lot of households (especially when children have grown up but can't afford to move out) require parking for 3/4 cars.

When we were looking for a house, parking was one of our top MUST-HAVE priorities. As i can only see parking getting worse over the next 10-15 years before driverless cars start to become the norm.

We even turned down arranged viewings on a number of houses where we'd do a casual drive by to check the house out and notice that the drive way was absolutely tiny - photos made them look considerably longer.
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Most new build estates only come with a single driveway big enough for a Ford Focus, anything bigger over hangs the pavement.
 
I think it's as simple as if you have experienced bad noise from from next door then you will pay anything for a detached and if you have always been lucky with noise you will think a detached is just a excessive waste of money.......I would rather live in a detached that's half the size then anything where neighbours can he heard though the walls ....
 
Bobmunkhouse said:
I think it's as simple as if you have experienced bad noise from from next door then you will pay anything for a detached and if you have always been lucky with noise you will think a detached is just a excessive waste of money.......I would rather live in a detached that's half the size then anything where neighbours can he heard though the walls ....
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I've wrote about this before but when we got married in 1980 we had a terrace and about a year later a young woman moved in next door.
I could write a book about all the incidents but the worst was she only had one record which was Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two tribes.
She would play this repeatedly at full volume and still to this day it had such an impact on me that I keep headphones next to the TV just in case.
She also used to set her record player to repeat when she went out and when I had her about it many times she would say it was to deter burglars.
I came to the end of my tether and hired two low life's to break into her house and steal her record player and TV but a week later she'd got new ones (that cost me £100).
When we left in 1983, about a month later we got a phone call off the new owners asking if we'd ever had any problems and to cut a long story short we agreed to go to court if we had to but she was evicted by the landlord.

Since 1983, even though we live in a semi-detached, our neighbour hasn't got a radio or a TV. We do worry that when he passes what will end up next door.
 
"I came to the end of my tether and hired two low life's to break into her house and steal her record player and TV but a week later she'd got new ones (that cost me £100)."

Not sure i would admint to that on a public forum?
 
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