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I bought a new construction townhouse about 6 months ago - asked lots of questions about the quality of the sound proofing in the shared wall (we're the end unit of four houses) and the builder assured us, provided all their building diagrams and got me in touch with the architect. I asked if the buildings were framed independently as four separate structures or more like condos where it's one large building divided up. They assured me that the houses were built independently and even showed me the one unit which hadn't been drywalled yet so I could see what was in the walls. I've lived in lots of different townhouses all over the city and never really had any issues before. Flash forward 3 months to us occupying the house and our neighbors next door and two doors down move in. Immediately we are hearing the poo poo out of each other, conversations are coming through the wall, if we play music at a moderate volume the neighbors two doors down hear it in their living room. If I play it loud, they hear it in their master bedroom on the 3rd floor. In the house between us, it's 3/4 as loud as it is in my house. I can rattle the plates in their cabinets and don't even have a subwoofer. All of us are cool and considerate of each other, but we're pissed as gently caress we can hear each other so clearly that we know who is in what room of each house at all times. In our master bedrooms, we can all hear each other loving clear as day. One odd thing is that we're able to hear more through the front wall of the house than the shared party wall. If I put my ear up to the front wall it sounds like a telephone conversation from next door. All the houses are under warranty and the builder lives in the area, so the complaining begins. The builder is a total jackass and takes no responsibility. Comes over multiple times to do "sound tests" where he and his goons make noise and listen to it through the walls. The only purpose this has is for him to downplay concerns and make us feel crazy. When I brought up the sound coming from the front of the house, he explained that the front wall of all four houses was built as one unit, so may be leaking sound that way. This was contrary to what he told us before going under contract when they told us that the houses were built and framed independently (got that in writing). 3 more months of complaining back and forth and they finally agree to help remediate the sound issue. Their proposal is that we buy 4 panels of QuietRock drywall and they will install them for us on the shared wall in our living room, move the electrical boxes, sand the drywall and install the trim. We'd have to clean, paint everything and hang the TV on the wall. Don't think this is a great deal and doesn't seem like it's going to be super effective. Wondering what kind of recourse we have here, if any, and what the hell we can even do to make the situation better. People have suggested hat channel and another layer of drywall, but this is tough/impossible with the configuration of the house, the way the stairs are set up and how narrow the house is. I really want to avoid paying for this as much as possible because the house was expensive and they should have done a better job. The builder is pretty well known and he doesn't seem to give a poo poo about his reputation. I don't know of a way where we could just sell the house without getting financially destroyed, and what kind of obligation we'd have to disclose all this poo poo to a potential buyer scares me.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:14
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Goondolences. I don't know what kind of remedy you have. The thing is, I wish they were noisy so I could bitch at them but they're not loud. Everyone is reasonable and respectful. But I can hear their goddamn footsteps and conversations like they're in my house.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:20
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HEY NONG MAN posted:I have a a friend in the same boat. He is so annoyed with the shared wall noise that he and his wife are considering moving into our friends' Airbnb while they find somewhere else to buy. It's a lovely part of living in the city, everything here is a townhouse.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:36
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Droo posted:Does the drywall go all the way up above the ceiling, or is the space inside the ceiling basically open to the other units? As loud as you describe it, this is my first guess. Sound can get into your ceiling cavity through light fixtures and vent openings and just float over into the other units. The fix for this is messy but easy - tear down enough drywall to properly do the job, and patch it all back up. Here's the wall assembly for the party wall from the builder:  1. 5/8" drywall 2. 2x4 framing 3. R11 unfaced batt insulation 4. N/A 5. 5/8" Fire rated Densglass, similar to drywall. 6. Air Gap, another absorbing quality. The drywall does go up above the ceiling. There are no shared ceiling joists, there's an air gap between each house and the space inside the ceiling on each floor is specific to each unit. The sound doesn't seem to come from the floor or the ceiling, just straight through the wall. There are no vents or ducts on my wall, they're all in the floor. The return for the house next door is in their wall, however. We don't hear as much high pitched as we do mids and lows, but occasionally if something is loud enough, we do hear it all.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:42
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Droo posted:Maybe the same theory, but in the space below the floor? Are you able to pop out a floor vent and see what kind of structure exists under the floor between your unit and your neighbor? The floor is built the same way. I can actually see the assembly in the basement in the part that is unfinished. I'd agree with you on the drywall/insulation damage thing with the ductwork insulation, but the issue is just as bad in the bedrooms where there's nothing but insulation in the walls.
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Feb 16, 2017 23:02
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Yep, when people are outside the house we hear them actually a bit louder than we do through the wall, but I suspect that some of that is windows and doors.
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Feb 17, 2017 01:32
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My neighbor who just had a newborn and is having the same issue as us is having a contractor rip out all the fiberglass in his walls and re-insulate with spray foam, in the hopes that it will help with the noise.
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Feb 19, 2017 06:19
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Another thing our builder told us prior to entering contract (which I unfortunately did not get in writing) was that our roof top deck was overbuilt and would support the weight of a hot tub. That was a big plus for us, and part of the reason why we decided to move forward. I was in the process of ordering a tub a few months ago and the vendor asked us to get a pounds per square foot rating for the roof, which I asked builder for. He reached out to the architect/structural engineer who told us it was built to code requirement, or 40 pounds per square foot. The tub, which was the lightest available model I could find, required 100 PSF. If we had moved forward without asking builder to verify again, that would have been a major disaster. Builder apologized for overstating and said that the previous homes of the same design were overbuilt, but mine was not. The architect told us that it would be possible to put a tub up there, but we'd have to have the joists sistered, which would involve tearing out the ceiling below the roof and reinforcing everything. Sounds expensive. It's amazing and extremely frustrating to me that builders can basically lie to get you into a contract, then back out of these obligations or plead ignorance after you take ownership. I can understand a typical homeowner selling and not knowing for sure what is in the walls or ceilings, but not the person who actually designed and built the house.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:26
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I didn't get the initial promise in writing, however I did get him admitting that he had overspoken at the walkthrough, not sure how valid that is. One thing I did get in writing - they're townhouses with a shared party wall. I asked how the houses were built and framed, if they featured any shared structures like a condo, or if they were built independently. He said they were built and framed independently, with an air gap in between the houses. Later on, we found out that he misspoke and the front and rear facade of the houses are all one shared shear wall, which explains why those walls shake when the neighbors open and close their doors. That wall also passes an incredible amount of sound.
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Feb 21, 2017 21:05
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I've got a 3 story with finished basement new construction townhouse corner unit - 1900 sq ft of total living space and was built last year. The HVAC system is new, with a 3-ton condenser. It seems to struggle to keep the house cool, consumes a lot of electricity and runs more than it should, so I'm trying to narrow down reasons why this might be. The two return trunks are run from the basement where the air handler is through two 16 inch 2x4 stud bays in the exterior wall. More on that later. One of the trunks stops in the first-floor living room where the grille is, the other goes up two stories to the third-floor hallway. (Here's a photo of the return trunks before they were drywalled - https://i.imgur.com/6fguakM.jpg) You can see how the trunk on the right terminates at the ceiling, and the left one goes into the ceiling and up to the third floor. When they installed the return grille for the first floor (pictured here - https://i.imgur.com/aobG3Ho.jpg) they for whatever reason cut the drywall about 6 inches into the third floor return trunk on the left. I'm wondering if this is a design flaw, I can't understand why you would want to partially open up the third-floor trunk on the first floor, seems like it would just rob pressure potential from the third floor return and make the system less efficient. Another thing I realized is that the return trunks are running up the entire side of the house, and since they take up two entire stud bays, there is no insulation. The exterior wall is clad in metal siding, and it is a southern facing wall, so I'm assuming these trunks are taking on a decent amount of heat from the siding and bringing it into the system, reducing efficiency. Lastly I noticed they ran Romex through the return trunks, can see that in the first link. Is that kosher? EDIT: I am a moron, these are returns and not supply. Corrected post. BusinessWallet fucked around with this message at 20:49 on May 19, 2017 |
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May 19, 2017 17:25
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Motronic posted:This assumes a properly installed system first, so it's going to be meaningless for the OP. Could it just be that the return is just too small for the unit and it is starving for air? The house is well insulated as far as I can tell. This is only an issue in the summer time, the house stayed very warm pretty effortlessly during the winter, even when it was extremely cold outside.
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May 19, 2017 20:45
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So far I've talked to 4 different HVAC contractors about this topic. One quoted me to replace the entire system with a "proper" install. One told me to double the size of my return grills. One told me it was operating completely within spec. One told me he wouldn't touch it at all. None of them took any kinds of measurements.
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May 19, 2017 20:52
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I live in Philly which is currently experiencing a construction boom, so all anyone wants to do is install new systems in new/renovated houses. No one is interested in smaller jobs right now, I've been told this directly.
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May 19, 2017 21:01
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How can I build a floating wooden deck on top of my fiberglass roof deck? I'd like to do this because it'll look nicer than the coated fiberglass, protect the roof, and most importantly level out the slope of the roof so it's more usable. Right now all the furniture doesn't sit right, like you're being ejected from the seat you're in. And my dog is eventually going to drop a tennis ball into the gutter somehow.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:49
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Tricky Ed posted:Be really, really, really, really, really careful here, is all I can say. My parents tried to have a deck over a flat roof and it constantly leaked everywhere the membrane was pierced. The third time they tried rebuilding it they finally used "pitch cups," where every support post sat in a literal cup of pitch, trying to keep water out of the holes. That kind of worked for a while. Good advice. I was not planning on going through the roof at all.
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Jun 25, 2017 03:57
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paternity suitor posted:I think he's saying he already has a fiberglass deck with a slope and he just wants to install a floating deck on top. I'm considering the same thing (next year). Yep! There are some pedestal systems that exist for this purpose specifically and seem pretty easy to DIY, but they're pretty expensive.
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Jun 27, 2017 21:28
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I live in a Philly rowhouse and I'm at the end of the row. My neighbor has a motorcycle and their nanny has a vespa which they both park on the sidewalk next to my house. Here's a photo.  Parking motorcycles on the sidewalk in front of your house in Philly is semi legal afaik, but people here are lovely and we're kinda worried that someone is going to "trip" over one of the bikes and then try to sue us since it's our sidewalk. We also just don't really want them there. Weird that they don't just park in front of their house which is right next door, but I guess they don't want to have directly in front of their door or something. We are cool, but don't know them well enough to have that kind of conversation without it being a thing. How do I deal with this without being a petty dickhead?
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Jun 29, 2017 15:38
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:Do you live in SE Center City? All of Philly looks the same, but this looks like the block adjacent to where I lived (21st and Lombard - near Pemberton) It's in "East Kensington" aka Fishtown I like your attitude 
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Jun 29, 2017 17:51
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It's a great city for sure. There are a lot of weird unwritten laws in different neighborhoods, not a lot of places like this anywhere.
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Jun 29, 2017 18:30
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Yeah, another thing to add to the godddamn motorcycle. If they gently caress up the sidewalk, I have to fix it. I didn't even think about that.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:19
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Just bought a house in Philly and have been here for about a month. Noticed the street outside is pretty wash boarded. When trucks and busses drive over this, it noticeably shakes the whole house, its a bit jarring. There are stress cracks around the house but it is 60 years old and the house was inspected prior to purchase, the cracks were noticed and we were told it was nothing out of the ordinary. Considering hiring a structural engineer to take a look at it just to reassure myself but is there anything I can do other than bitch at the city about repaving the street?
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Jan 15, 2022 22:57
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Inner Light posted:Funny, I also have a street issue right now. One of the manhole covers came loose so every time a car drives over this cover, right in the traffic lane on a very busy street, aligned with where wheels go, it makes a loud clunk clunk noise. Kinda like if there was a steel plate over the road for construction. Can you reseat it with a crowbar?
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Jan 15, 2022 23:45
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