Sound proofing regulations for flat conversions?

[salome81]

I am a tenant and I live in a basement flat in a victorian house that was converted into 4 flats sometime in the 1970s or 80s.

My bedroom is directly below the neighbour's living room and I hear everything he says and does as if we were sharing a house. It's starting to become a health issue as I do not get to sleep until 2am some mornings. The neighbour is not a nuisance, it is just normal house noise but even wearing earplugs at night doesn't always block out the footsteps, floorboards and voices.

It would seem that there is literally no soundproofing or insulation at all. I was wondering if there are regulations or a law for soundproofing this type of conversion? Would the council or maintenance company of the building be responsible for installing it?

I need some sleep!

[ajr]

Sound proofing of Flat conversions became a requirement under the Building Regulations in 2000. Prior to this little was required to reduce noise transmission. There is no current legislation requiring the retrospective installation of sound reduction - yet! However, with the HSRS legislation about to make an impact on all landlords sound reduction measures may well become a future requirement.

Regards

ajr

[investor68]

Hi ajr

I was interested to read your post as I am a new landlord just in the throes of buying a first floor purpose built maisonette to let out. Please can you give me any more info on the new regulations to which you refer? At the moment there are just floorboards in the flat and I was going to put a thick underlay and carpet to help reduce noise impact on the people downstairs.

I am keen to get this right now to avoid complaints later so can you offer any help or point me in the right direction of what the new regulations say I might need to install? Even if this isn't actually required now maybe it would be better to comply at this stage?

Also I posted somewhere else on this board about fire regulations - my survey says that because the floorboards have not been overboarded with plywood this poses a "health risk" and that I might find it difficult to get insurance. I've never heard of this before either but I suppose the overboarding might itself help with noise insulation?

Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

Regards