apartments in Rotterdam have bad flooring or sound proofing?

2POSTS

7 years ago

Hello, me, my husband and 2 children are currently living in an apartment in Rotterdam for almost 2 weeks now. My question is:
Are all apartments or houses in Netherlands/rotterdam have poor sound proofing? I can hear the foot steps of my upstairs neighbor or their voices. but my worries is that my downstairs neighbor is complaining when my children are running. In fact, they were not even running at that time when he complaimed how much more when they are running. Now i kept reprimanding them for moving around. But they are children they are bound to do that. Now its making me guilty that they cant even move freely anymore ☹... I really appreciate your feedback.

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Ramses K. Serial expat

358POSTS

7 years ago

Hi,

It depends when your building was built. Buildings from the 1950s don't really have a good soundproofing. If you have an older house with wooden floors, well that's noisey.
So no not all apartments have bad soundproofing, only the old ones.

Cynic UK/Netherlands Expert

8103POSTS

7 years ago

One thing that we noticed was that our house in Holland (built in the 90's), like many others of the time, had concrete floors; when we laid a laminate floor on top of that, that when our kids ran around with their shoes on, it made a lot of noise; solution - Schoenen uit, pantoffels aan.

Viruss Member

2POSTS

7 years ago

@ Ramses K.
I don't really know how old is this building, we are staying in Oud Mathenese area...
Perhaps we should find a newer building then or a "children friendly" building... 😂

@cynic
yes we walk barefoot inside the apartment. we are planning to buy a carpet to somehow lessen the noise.

thanks for your feedbacks...

se7enyg Member

11POSTS

6 years ago

It sounds exactly like the house I am living in South Holland. It is definately a wooden floor house. These are old houses, where sound isolation was not done earlier. My house was built in 1898, luckily I live on the second level not the ground. But we don't wear shoes at home, still the ground floor neighbour is sensitive to the sound. Loud noises can even be transferred to few houses to your left and right.

Cheap and fast solution is to walk lightly and gently (without shoes). Trying not dropping the heels hardly. When we have guests, we realise some people do walk very hard and fast with their heels. It's too annoying. Add carpet to reduce the sound of stepping.