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We just moved into our brand new home. It's a 3000 sf 3 story *custom home (garage is the 1st floor, then 2 stories). Overall we're really happy, there are some things that we're not happy with.
==== *The builder owned the land and brought the plans. We put down 8% during the construction phase- so we didn't do the traditional way w/ a construction loan. The reason I mention this is because most people assume we had a say in every step, but we didn't. The builder gave us allowances and we could have changed plans before construction, but we liked their design.
====
As expected, we didn't find everything during the walkthrough before closing. But the good news is that our builder has a 30 day and 1 year walkthrough.
One big issue is that we can hear everything in the house (2 main floors). My wife couldn't find her phone, so we called it and heard it vibrating... we looked in the living room on the main floor. But it was actually upstairs in the closet.
When you're upstairs in the MBR, you can hear people walking downstairs. We have two young kids and it's hard to keep quiet downstairs so they can sleep.
Is this normal??? I spoke to the foreman and he said that there's no insulation between the main floor and upstairs. I was shocked, to say the least. Why would a builder NOT insulate between floors??? The house cost $500k, what's a couple more hundred dollars to blow insulation before drywall is up????
What are our options? If we want to insulate between floors, now we'll have to cut into the ceiling between each joist and blow insulation???
Our previous home was a townhouse on a slab, so I understand that we're going to hear more than our last home.
Are you fully moved in? Furnishings will remove or dampen A LOT of the sound. An empty house tends to almost have an echo. Once you have everything in, it's not bad.
It's not standard practice to insulate between 1st and 2nd floor. Why would you expect that?
There are custom sound proofing that can be done as "custom" in a custom build home. Your probably got a builder grade home. In my area, customer build homes are 1mil and up.
I think no insulation between floors is typical of a single family house. I was renting a first floor in-law apt that is really a regular split-level ranch style single family house. I could hear every little sound from the other family upstairs, very annoying to say the least.
Is your flooring carpet, hardwood/laminate, etc. - those have a big effect on sound dampening. If it's hardwood, then thick rugs will help cut down the sound from people walking around. The sound of footsteps from kids is loud - speaking from experience. Maybe because they run more than they walk.
A 500K house... that doesn't mean builders won't cut corners whereever they can. BTW, in my area, that can only get you a very modest house, if you can even find a new construction that cheap.
We have had homes with all wood...real wood ... floors and never heard what was going on on another floor. If we wanted to hear the kids upstairs we moved to the stairwell and listened or called up. If someone upstairs wanted someone on the first floor, they could yell and the person could walk to the stairwell.
We needed to stay in a condo between homes not too long ago. We heard sounds next door, upstairs and downstairs.
Don't know what was different in the inner unseen construction. DO know the floors were what I call fake wood. What are your floors?
I think it's quite likely the joists are what are "fake"; seldom are solid wood joists used anymore.
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