Their foot steps sound like they just have 2 pegs for feet… they hit so hard.
And they frequently, almost daily, spend the entire evening stomping around the entire footprint of their apartment.
Are there people who really just get the top floor, and think “I’m so smart, and everyone else can get fucked” then proceed to make all the fucking noise in the world?
we need to put sound insulation into the building codes. it won’t increase rents much since all the money’s in the land anyways. personally I’ve never had an actual issue with noise form other units but I’ll grant this to the people who do.
I don’t really want to force a specific bottom limit on sound insulation, which is what that would do, though.
Some people won’t care as much as others relative to price and may not want to pay what it’d cost. And some people may want a much-quieter unit than any bottom limit would place.
The problem is that they can’t make an informed decision now because the information isn’t available.
Might be worth just mandating it since you can also fix thermal efficiency issues at the same time. And that affects everyone since poor thermal efficiency = more pressure on the electricity grid and increased risks of extreme cold and heat to individuals.
But transparency would certainly be better than nothing.
So just stick all the poor people with the paper thin walls?
The problem is the information isn’t available. There’s no place to leave reviews of apartments. That seems like a no-brainer to me.
First, IBC has had this as code for at least 15 years.
Second, all the money is most definitely not in the land. As a general ballpark, developers want the land to be under 1/4 of the total cost of the project.
Nice. How effective is that minimum standard? Most currently existing buildings are of course older than 15 years so most people won’t have experienced it. Sadly these days anywhere remotely urban has way more than 1/4 the cost as land, espically for already existing buildings
Pretty sure sound isolation is a factor in LEED rating
It is, but LEED was kind of a flash-in-the-pan fad for tax breaks and hardly any developers strive for a LEED certificate anymore (exception I’ve seen is govt projects). the cost of LEED certification is too much for most developers to stomach.
Nowadays I mostly see LEED as an extra set of letters in a person’s email signature.
Perhaps LEED should be replaced by a bunch of smaller certifications, each covering only a tiny subset.
It is nice to have one logo you can stick on a building, instead of lots of them. But after a little pushing it could be normalized to have a spot for multiple plaques near the entrance of a building, showing which certs it has earned.
Then you have a lower bar for entry and owners can choose a la carte what they want to strive for, and disregard the rest.
Like, a sound isolation rating on an apartment building would be a huge selling point. Have a certifying company that brings in big speakers and microphones and tests room-to-room sound conduction. Then you get a certification for the soundproofing.
I guess the nice thing about private cert authorities is anybody can just do this. It would take a while to get recognized but you could solve the two-sided marketplace problem pretty easily.
LEED kinda works like that with the different levels. LEED Gold checks off requirements a, b, and c; LEED Platinum also includes d and e, etc. I’m not LEED accredited, though, so I can’t speak to the finer differences.
There is a new standard making headway called WELL Certification . I’m not sure the difference between this and LEED but I’d be interested to learn more one day.