I've got this horrible neighbour upstairs who might possibly be the loudest person in the western hemisphere. Walking around in heels for hours at a time, phone rings so loud that it's more effective at waking me up than my alarm, constantly screeching furniture around all day everyday, blasting the same annoying movie at random times, and slamming doors every 15 minutes.
The apartment isn't even that bad for noise seperation, I never hear the neighbours beside me or the ones under me. This woman is just annoying and I've gone upstairs before to tell her to stop blasting music at midnight in the middle of the week, she treated me like I was the maniac for having the audacity to knock on her door.
As I'm laying in bed last night after getting woken up and hoping today is the day she drops dead, I was wondering why she even needs to close doors. When I lived alone I don't think I ever closed doors, maybe the bathroom on occasion but this old woman lives by herself with no pets yet she's constantly slamming doors. Do people normally close doors often when they live alone?
Always did in apartments. Closing the bedroom door gives me another layer between the neighbors and street traffic. I added rubber door sweeps and seals to further dampen the noise. In a detached home, I'd leave the door open during the day but close it when I sleep for added fire safety.
I used to have a downstairs neighbor who stomped loudly and my pleas didn't work. So I got a subwoofer and played some low-frequency white noise when I needed to drown it out. After reading your comments, I'd highly recommend this if you can't move out yet.
They seriously need to build more apartments and condos with concrete instead of thin wood in the US. I miss my old apartment when I was in Germany. Nice sturdy concrete walls so my neighbor could blast music all day without bothering me at all.
Concrete is a desaster from an environmental perspective and there are other ways to dampen sound between two apartment units such as clay, straw, lime, hemp etc.
Concrete -> density -> efficient housing and metro
I'm sorry you love sprawl and roads.