it’s extremely common for americans to dismiss apartments because they simply cannot fathom the idea of housing that actually blocks noise, it’s one of the primary arguments i see used against denser housing.
Comment on 2x2 lumber at Home Depot is now 1.28x1.28. Nominal size is supposed to be 1.5
Carighan@lemmy.world 5 months agoTo someone from central europe it’s always weird how houses get build from wood in the US. 😅 I imagine you can hear ~everything happening ~anywhere in the house?
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 5 months ago
Yup. Over here in the Western US, nearly every apartment is built as cheaply as possible and run by slumlords that will do everything that they can to refuse to return deposits. Painting over bugs and black mold between tenants is the norm, in my experience, not the exception. Add to that that insulation between apartments is scant, if present and frequently there are no physical barriers between apartment building attic accesses (in every top-story apartment that I’ve been in, it would be easily possible to gain access to others’ apartments via the attic and the attics also act to channel sound between all top apartments).
oatscoop@midwest.social 5 months ago
Not really, unless the house was built incredibly cheaply with thin studs and crappy drywall.
Wood is pretty decent at blocking sound – it the voids between the studs that’s an issue. Filling them with sound deadening insulation solves that problem.
It’s not as good at blocking sound as a masonry wall obviously, but it’s “good enough” at a fraction of the price.
Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I want to say that stick-built homes are really not so fragile as people seem to think. There’s tradeoffs, of course, and ways to build them that make them uncomfortable at best and blatantly unsafe at worst. That being said, they’re pretty sturdy, fairly easy to repair and modify, and relatively quick and cheap to build.
profdc9@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s a big improvement from making them from straw.
n0m4n@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I spent a few nights in a straw bale home, wanting to experience what they were like. They are incredibly quiet. Each bale is 1.5 ft of soundproofing/insulation. The loudest part of the house was the clock ticking. The house was heated by appliances such as the refrigerator and water heater. A local monastery built several to rent out for people wanting a tranquil contemplation.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Depends. The cheap houses, yeah, there’s as fair bit of noise, but you can’t hear everything. From downstairs, you can hear when someone walks across the room above you, but not when they’re walking in other upstairs rooms. And from rooms on the same level, you can hear if someone is talking loudly in the room next door, but not enough to make out what they say unless they’re yelling.
Well-built houses or buildings made for occupancy by multiple families usually have better sound insulation between the units, so it’s not always an issue.