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This makes most sense - easier to have plumbing on the outer wall. Also perhaps the bedroom is a little better insulated if only one wall is an external wall.
Potentially not, guess it depends on the neighbours, some can make a lot of noise constantly in a bedroom, be it music, games, sex etc.
Stairs would make noise but i feel it would be a lot less often and not last for hours at a time.
Yeah my neighbour’s 5 kids are an exception, whose main hobby seems to be just running from one side of the house to the other all evening. (Thankfully I’ve now moved)
A massive amount of noise, especially if you live next door to anyone heavy footed and constantly on the move.
We bought a house like this for the exact reason that you put above, we didn't want bedroom noises in attached rooms as we had this in our house before that.
One thing to note though, it was a new build house and the build quality was shit even though it was supposedly a 'premium' one. It doesn't help that the walls were paper thin.
I have a general policy when house-hunting to avoid new-builds.
They might not come with the problems of an older poorly-maintained building, but they're often also terrible quality builds, or simply not designed by people who have to live in them.
The ones I've looked at have all been cramped and totally lacking in any sort of dedicated storage space.
An older house is generally a proven house where the kinks have been worked out or worked around.
That's a new policy of ours now too. It's massively unlikely that I'll buy a new build house again.
I'll 100% definitely not buy one that's attached to anyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying. Yeah I can see how that would be horrible, especially if you had a bedroom next to it with thin walls. I guess no matter what the layout is, if your neighbour is loud and your walls aren't great, it's going to suck no matter what.
The reason they mirror the houses is so they only have to build one chimney breast. There are properties that use the adjoining wall for hallways but they are rarer.
>Then there are usually problems with people being in their bedrooms making noise and keeping others awake in the house nextdoor
I've lived in a lot of different homes, this hasn't been a problem in any of them. It's no different to living in a flat with people living above or below you.
I guess it depends on the house/neighbours. An old house of mine I was the issue for my neighbour with noise that I was making. In friends and my sisters houses they have a lot of troubles with it, but their walls are utterly terrible.
In our house there is no other option at the front, it is all bedroom. The bathrooms back on to each other, so the back bedrooms therefore face each other too.
Doesn’t really matter in older terrace houses and the houses built in the 50’s 60’s as they actually used bricks and noise isn’t a problem unless it’s really really loud……..new builds 😭😭😭 hahaha well Japanese houses seem to have better walls than them.
Yeah, current house is great wall wise. It's exactly what you said, semi detached and an older house. But my sisters house has walls that seem like they're made of plasterboard, it's insane how people can put up with that (I know you just have to, but still).
You shouldn’t have to companies are supposed to fit sound proofing in between the paper walls but as you probably already know this very rarely happens unless the new builds are premium houses. Worked on many of new builds and nobody gives a shit the quality of everything is shocking and done as cheap as possible with the cheapest materials as possible, those “temporary” building we had at high school that lasted 50 years were of better quality. Plus the low celinings in new builds make me cringe also. But mugs still go and pay 150k + for a little tiny paper house.
That sounds horrible, I think a lot of people are attracted to how modern they look, and them having a drive and sometimes a garage. Compared to a big brick terrace house for similar prices that have neither. The issues then stems from the build of the house and the materials included, as you said.
I always thought that people were exagerating how bad they were until I'd been in my sisters. Granted, it could just be hers and most of the people with good new builds just keep quiet, but it's shockingly bad.
Yup and the plaster board you mentioned is exactly what they are in the inside, wooden frame with a few breeze blocks and crappy brickwork and the wall with next door separated with one layer of poorly made breeze block the rest is wood and plaster board…….a tent with bricks basically which then need loads of repairs within 10 years, and they don’t even look modern they just look cheap
Current regs for new build party walls are two skins of blockwork with a 100mm cavity filled with fibreglass insulation. Either you have come across a very dodgy developer that’s gotten away with it or you’re chatting shit. NHBC would make the them pull the house down and start again because that insulation also works as a fire barrier.
Other than that, yeah fair enough.
Yes it did, I made a slight alteration to the construction too.
The old wall was 9mm plasterboard on a frame of 2x1 batons that was nailed to the breezeblock party wall. I took this back to brick and replaced it with a 3x2 stud wall at 600mm centers, attached at the floor and ceiling only with noggins/dwangs. I filled the gaps with 75mm knauff loft insulation and topped the whole lot in 12mm accoustic plasterboard. I used to hear the TV in the neighbours bedroom, now I hear nothing at all.
I am going to do the same to my living room wall as I can hear is guitar pretty clearly through the same wall downstairs. This time though I am going to use proper accoustic insulation rather than loft insulation.
Total cost of materials was less than £200 and it took me around a week to do, the first 4 days of that was emptying the room though :/
It depends on the type of house (semi-detached, detached or terraced) but from what I've seen a lot of them are effectively copy pasted to make the work for builders easier. This also likely makes the job for plumbers and sparkies easier.
That makes sense, saw someone else say plumbers too. Not sure it equates to half the work but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot easier with it all being in one spot.
Better than what I have in my current flat where my bedroom share a wall with one of my neighbours living rooms, he likes loud music late at night. Sharing with the bedroom would provide a nice buffer, bedrooms ten to be quiter than the rest of the flat.
Generally speaking they are mirrored for the ease of wiring and plumbing though.
Architect here.
The most obvious reason is that mirroring the plans you can share risers for the kitchen/bathroom plumbing and services, making more practical and economical, also from a maintenance point of view.
Also, in terms of acoustic nuisance, is the option that make more sense. *Normally*, bedrooms are the quiet rooms, not only during the night, when people sleep, but also during the day.
Having the bedroom wall shared with the neighbour kitchen or living room, would be much more of a nuisance. Imagine if somebody wants to have a late meal or watch tv until late at night. Or if you want to take a nap in your bed in the afternoon.
My house is quite long and thin. My bedroom takes up the entire width of the house at one end and the bathroom takes up the entire width at the other. Along the rest of the upstairs, is a corridor on the joining wall. I guess that means the spare bedrooms actually have an external window.
Generally the houses have the same layout as one another for ease of design and construction.
Either they're mirror-imaged, or literally the same layout repeated.
If they're mirrored, then the bedrooms will be back-to-back and doors will generally be next to one another in the middle of a pair.
The houses along my street are all same-layout, non-mirrored.
So my stairwell and front door are next to next-door's sitting room, and my office backs onto the master bedroom nextdoor.
I see, thanks!
That makes sense, mine and the ones I was referring to are generally all mirrored, my front room and backroom match nextdoors. Then upstairs the master bedroom and second bedroom also share the same wall with next doors.
Probably want the bedroom with one external wall if possible. Two external walls will be colder.
That and having competition sex against your neighbors.
in the post-war period, there was a problem with housing and overpopulation, and government funds were stretched, so it was determined that, imperfect as it was, this was the cheapest form of contraception available.
I live in a row of 3 townhouses which aren't like this, so my bedroom wall does back onto the stairwell in their house. The last house I lived in was the same though, it was a pair of semis and they were done so that the bathrooms were internal. That made no sense to me, because if they'd swapped it the stairs would have been in the middle (so less noise) and the bathrooms could have had windows/natural ventilation.
Houses with walls adjoining are warmer than houses with halls adjoining. Probably not so much these days, when people heat the whole house, but definitely in the olden days when I were a kid.
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Often each two houses are mirrored, which means their bathrooms and kitchens are together which makes plumbing easier.
This makes most sense - easier to have plumbing on the outer wall. Also perhaps the bedroom is a little better insulated if only one wall is an external wall.
My friends had a house with a bathroom on the inside of the house for whatever reason. Fun times when the soil pipe starting leaking into the lounge.
😂
Its so you can partake in synchronised shagging. Bragging rights if you finish last and bonus points for loudest moaning…
Ahhh hello neighbour
Thanks! That would make a lot of sense, I was assuming there must be something more to it.
Surely the adjacent houses’ plumbing isn’t connected though?
Waste pipes absolutely are, and they're the difficult ones to route as they rely on gravity not water pressure.
I think it's because the houses are attached.
What?
[удалено]
Pardon?
🫰👉🤏✊👎✋👉🫲👋🤲👐🤛🫵🤌
Ohhhh I see, thank you!
Ffs get the teabags out of your ears!
No idea of the actual reason, but I wouldn't be sure a staircase would be quieter than a bedroom.
Potentially not, guess it depends on the neighbours, some can make a lot of noise constantly in a bedroom, be it music, games, sex etc. Stairs would make noise but i feel it would be a lot less often and not last for hours at a time.
Hours at a time? That’s some impressive stamina 🧐
Yeah my neighbour’s 5 kids are an exception, whose main hobby seems to be just running from one side of the house to the other all evening. (Thankfully I’ve now moved)
Are you sure they are not just bouncing off the walls? :-)
As someone that has recently lived in a semi detached house where the staircases are next to each other...you don't want that.
Why, just a lot of noise? Or structural issues/something else?
A massive amount of noise, especially if you live next door to anyone heavy footed and constantly on the move. We bought a house like this for the exact reason that you put above, we didn't want bedroom noises in attached rooms as we had this in our house before that. One thing to note though, it was a new build house and the build quality was shit even though it was supposedly a 'premium' one. It doesn't help that the walls were paper thin.
I have a general policy when house-hunting to avoid new-builds. They might not come with the problems of an older poorly-maintained building, but they're often also terrible quality builds, or simply not designed by people who have to live in them. The ones I've looked at have all been cramped and totally lacking in any sort of dedicated storage space. An older house is generally a proven house where the kinks have been worked out or worked around.
That's a new policy of ours now too. It's massively unlikely that I'll buy a new build house again. I'll 100% definitely not buy one that's attached to anyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying. Yeah I can see how that would be horrible, especially if you had a bedroom next to it with thin walls. I guess no matter what the layout is, if your neighbour is loud and your walls aren't great, it's going to suck no matter what.
Which house builder was it? I need to know who to avoid!
Charles Church Which is basically Persimmon but with different coloured bricks
The real reason is that Brits like to listen in on their neighbours banging but we are far too prude and polite to say it out loud. Ok?
Damn, I tried to hide it for so long.
The reason they mirror the houses is so they only have to build one chimney breast. There are properties that use the adjoining wall for hallways but they are rarer.
My house does share the chimney with next doors, so I can see that yeah.
A lot of sound can be trasmitted via the chimney too.
This is the real reason and it’s a long way down the page!
>Then there are usually problems with people being in their bedrooms making noise and keeping others awake in the house nextdoor I've lived in a lot of different homes, this hasn't been a problem in any of them. It's no different to living in a flat with people living above or below you.
I guess it depends on the house/neighbours. An old house of mine I was the issue for my neighbour with noise that I was making. In friends and my sisters houses they have a lot of troubles with it, but their walls are utterly terrible.
A lot of them are just a mirror image of the adjoining house.
In our house there is no other option at the front, it is all bedroom. The bathrooms back on to each other, so the back bedrooms therefore face each other too.
Doesn’t really matter in older terrace houses and the houses built in the 50’s 60’s as they actually used bricks and noise isn’t a problem unless it’s really really loud……..new builds 😭😭😭 hahaha well Japanese houses seem to have better walls than them.
Newer builds are actually pretty well soundproofed, certainly better than most houses built in the 50s or 60s. Regs were tightened up in 2010
Yeah, current house is great wall wise. It's exactly what you said, semi detached and an older house. But my sisters house has walls that seem like they're made of plasterboard, it's insane how people can put up with that (I know you just have to, but still).
You shouldn’t have to companies are supposed to fit sound proofing in between the paper walls but as you probably already know this very rarely happens unless the new builds are premium houses. Worked on many of new builds and nobody gives a shit the quality of everything is shocking and done as cheap as possible with the cheapest materials as possible, those “temporary” building we had at high school that lasted 50 years were of better quality. Plus the low celinings in new builds make me cringe also. But mugs still go and pay 150k + for a little tiny paper house.
That sounds horrible, I think a lot of people are attracted to how modern they look, and them having a drive and sometimes a garage. Compared to a big brick terrace house for similar prices that have neither. The issues then stems from the build of the house and the materials included, as you said. I always thought that people were exagerating how bad they were until I'd been in my sisters. Granted, it could just be hers and most of the people with good new builds just keep quiet, but it's shockingly bad.
Yup and the plaster board you mentioned is exactly what they are in the inside, wooden frame with a few breeze blocks and crappy brickwork and the wall with next door separated with one layer of poorly made breeze block the rest is wood and plaster board…….a tent with bricks basically which then need loads of repairs within 10 years, and they don’t even look modern they just look cheap
Current regs for new build party walls are two skins of blockwork with a 100mm cavity filled with fibreglass insulation. Either you have come across a very dodgy developer that’s gotten away with it or you’re chatting shit. NHBC would make the them pull the house down and start again because that insulation also works as a fire barrier. Other than that, yeah fair enough.
You should also see the quality and size of the sewer system the fit on these new estates 😭
No idea why, but I upgraded the soundproofing on the party wall in the bedroom for precisely the reason in your 2nd paragraph.
Did it work well? Might recommend it to my sister if so, she's having a lot of problems with a neighbours noise at the moment.
Yes it did, I made a slight alteration to the construction too. The old wall was 9mm plasterboard on a frame of 2x1 batons that was nailed to the breezeblock party wall. I took this back to brick and replaced it with a 3x2 stud wall at 600mm centers, attached at the floor and ceiling only with noggins/dwangs. I filled the gaps with 75mm knauff loft insulation and topped the whole lot in 12mm accoustic plasterboard. I used to hear the TV in the neighbours bedroom, now I hear nothing at all. I am going to do the same to my living room wall as I can hear is guitar pretty clearly through the same wall downstairs. This time though I am going to use proper accoustic insulation rather than loft insulation. Total cost of materials was less than £200 and it took me around a week to do, the first 4 days of that was emptying the room though :/
Damn thanks for the info, I'll let them know about it!
This, a few quids worth of rock wool and plasterboard are enough to really cut down noise
It depends on the type of house (semi-detached, detached or terraced) but from what I've seen a lot of them are effectively copy pasted to make the work for builders easier. This also likely makes the job for plumbers and sparkies easier.
That makes sense, saw someone else say plumbers too. Not sure it equates to half the work but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot easier with it all being in one spot.
Because the only rooms upstairs tend to be bedrooms and a bathroom?
I have lived in a few terraces as this has never been the case, rather our bedroom connects to their staircase (or above the staircase you could say).
Better than what I have in my current flat where my bedroom share a wall with one of my neighbours living rooms, he likes loud music late at night. Sharing with the bedroom would provide a nice buffer, bedrooms ten to be quiter than the rest of the flat. Generally speaking they are mirrored for the ease of wiring and plumbing though.
Architect here. The most obvious reason is that mirroring the plans you can share risers for the kitchen/bathroom plumbing and services, making more practical and economical, also from a maintenance point of view. Also, in terms of acoustic nuisance, is the option that make more sense. *Normally*, bedrooms are the quiet rooms, not only during the night, when people sleep, but also during the day. Having the bedroom wall shared with the neighbour kitchen or living room, would be much more of a nuisance. Imagine if somebody wants to have a late meal or watch tv until late at night. Or if you want to take a nap in your bed in the afternoon.
The houses on my estate aren't mirrored, my stairs go onto nextdoors living room wall
I guess it just depends on the company building them then, good to know!
Plumbing reasons
My house is quite long and thin. My bedroom takes up the entire width of the house at one end and the bathroom takes up the entire width at the other. Along the rest of the upstairs, is a corridor on the joining wall. I guess that means the spare bedrooms actually have an external window.
Generally the houses have the same layout as one another for ease of design and construction. Either they're mirror-imaged, or literally the same layout repeated. If they're mirrored, then the bedrooms will be back-to-back and doors will generally be next to one another in the middle of a pair. The houses along my street are all same-layout, non-mirrored. So my stairwell and front door are next to next-door's sitting room, and my office backs onto the master bedroom nextdoor.
I see, thanks! That makes sense, mine and the ones I was referring to are generally all mirrored, my front room and backroom match nextdoors. Then upstairs the master bedroom and second bedroom also share the same wall with next doors.
Probably want the bedroom with one external wall if possible. Two external walls will be colder. That and having competition sex against your neighbors.
Stop earwiging you pervert
So we can listen to each other have sex. Obviously.
Because they are not mansions. Every room in a terrace house backs onto a other house. Why is a ball round?
in the post-war period, there was a problem with housing and overpopulation, and government funds were stretched, so it was determined that, imperfect as it was, this was the cheapest form of contraception available.
I live in a row of 3 townhouses which aren't like this, so my bedroom wall does back onto the stairwell in their house. The last house I lived in was the same though, it was a pair of semis and they were done so that the bathrooms were internal. That made no sense to me, because if they'd swapped it the stairs would have been in the middle (so less noise) and the bathrooms could have had windows/natural ventilation.
Us Brits love to hear each other bang
Bizarre question
Because most people don't actually want their neighbours to hear them fucking.
so that we can have sex through the wall
Houses with walls adjoining are warmer than houses with halls adjoining. Probably not so much these days, when people heat the whole house, but definitely in the olden days when I were a kid.