Differing noise sensitivity

Diana and Joe sold their apartment in a fashionable city block and moved to a house in the suburbs because she could no longer stand the noises of the people in the apartment above theirs – noises that didn’t seem to bother Joe.

"They weren't deliberately noisy people," explains Diana. "They weren't having parties every night, fighting like cats and dogs or doing basketball practice. On the contrary, they were merely going about their daily lives and we could hear it all.”

“Especially the bathroom noises!"

"And if we could hear them, God knows what people could hear from our apartment!"

“When we moved into the apartment we were assured that the dividing floors were concrete and sound transmission from floor to floor was minimal,” explains Diana, “but it didn't occur to us - and the real estate agent was hardly likely to mention it - that sound also travels through pipes.”

"Either the pipes in this particular apartment block weren't properly soundproofed," says Diana, "or the building was poorly designed. Whatever caused the problem, the noise was unbearable for me, although it didn’t bother Joe.”

“With a kitchen at one end of the apartment, and a bathroom at the other end,” says Diana, “we were constantly subjected not only to the noise of water gurgling down the pipes from the apartment upstairs but also the normal sounds of voices and activity in those rooms.”

"After a lot of arguments with Joe, I finally got him to consider moving.”

“We thought of selling up moving to another apartment block," says Diana, "but our friend, George, warned us of a far worse problem -  the dividing walls in his apartment were apparently paper-thin and he could hear everything as clear as a bell. The copulating couple in the adjoining apartment finally drove him out of his bedroom into the living room to get some sleep!"

"We didn’t want to move to another apartment and face something as awful as listening to our neighbours having sex - or them listening to us having sex," laughs Diana, "so we opted for a house in the suburbs."

"It was a breeze to sell the apartment," says Diana. "People were queuing up to grab it - with or without noises!"

"Joe was quite happy living in a city apartment - noise or no noise," says Diana, "but after so many arguments with me about how I couldn’t stand the noise he was becoming quite enamoured of the idea of having plenty of space and privacy that a house in the suburbs affords."

"I'm not a particularly earthy woman, needing to delve into earth or needing a garden to centre me and I'm not exactly a space hog either needing a room for every activity," explains Diana. "I am just particularly sensitive to noises and it was for this reason, and none other, that we made a suburban house our lifestyle choice."

“Joe is not too happy about the inconvenience of having to spend more time travelling to work, having to arrange for someone to mow the lawn and generally being out of the swing of city-life,” laughs Diana, “but for the sake of our marriage he was prepared to give and take.”

“I’m making those ‘convenience’ sacrifices, too, but they are well worth the peace of being able to read in our living-room or go to sleep in our bedroom without hearing people above us, or under us, or on either side of dividing walls.”

"Buying a house in the suburbs means that we are doing a lot more entertaining than we ever did when we were living in an apartment," enthuses Diana, "and we’re lucky to have quiet neighbours here."

"Even if our neighbours had been noisy," explains Diana, "we have the option to sound-proof our house without having to ask an apartment block administrator’s permission to do so."

"Honestly, though," says Diana, "the occasional noise of kids playing and lawn mowers buzzing is like music compared to the invasive noise of other people’s water gushing down pipes through our place that we had to put up with in our old apartment."

"Cost-wise," says Diana, "the price of our house was only slightly more than the price of our old apartment, and we feel richer because we don’t have to regularly pay a set levy for communal upkeep of a block of apartments - but when the first maintenance bill on our house arises we’ll probably have a shock!"

"Anyway, what price can you put on peace, privacy and a happy marriage?”