Is Capitol Hill in Seatac Jet Path?

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by Kayela

Interesting post there. I have occasionally done testing in an acoustic anechoic chamber (very shielded room, even has its own seperate foundation from the rest of the building so that it's isolated from building movement or settling). It's as close as you can get to being an environment absolutely devoid of noise (noise levels < 0dB). And I'll say, I actually find true silence to be unnerving and physically uncomfortable. You never realize how loud 'silence' is until even that is gone.

Where I live atop the hills in the middle of Sammamish, 6 miles from I90 or 520, we have pretty much dead silence at night except for an occasional vehicle driving by at 25 mph. We leave the TV on with the timer to shut off in an hour because it can be too quiet to sleep.

When you move within a 25 mile radius of an airport you really should look into the flight paths, if that noise bothers you. Capital Hills is probably about 15 miles. Things do change, when additional runways are added or the FAA changes takeoff/landing patterns, but beyond 25 miles they are usually high enough up to minimize the noise.

[pw72]

I grew up in North Seattle with the noise, and to this day it doesn't bother me. It is simply a reminder that life is going on as usual and is easy to ignore, IMO. Yes, I will also expose myself as an aviation geek, and there were many summers when I would sit out in the backyard with binoculars looking at the planes close up. I remember one day in the 70's when a 747 flew very low over North Seattle. My guess it was heading to Paine Field in Everett and needed to stay below the usual Sea-Tac flight path.

I suppose if you are not used to it, it could be a problem.

[ak-rev]

I grew up on whidbey Island spend a weekend camping at deception pass if you want to gain some perspective on what real jet noise sounds like. Those ea18 growlers they got will rattle your teeth and make you bones ache. they put out something on the order of 140+ db on take off. I don't miss living there.

Hope you can come to terms with the noise.

[ctr88]

Screw all this talk about "enjoying the noise" cause your know the economy is happening. Noise is noise and if I can choose to live where it is not, I will. It is damn annoying & loud and I will look closely at the flight path for my next move. Like the other poster said, Wallingford gets much less noise and I'm sure plenty others areas too. It's not all day, it's in clusters. Unfortunately one of the heavy clusters is like 6pm to 11pm. Definitely affects my ability to get to sleep & general enjoyment of relaxing at home. I can't sleep with earplugs sticking out of my ears. And fans can work drowning out the slight drum of distant freeway noise, but they don't work at all with the intermittent roaring of jet engines passing overhead every few minutes.

[ctr88]

The other thing is if you think about it, 99.999xxx% of human history human beings lived in mostly silence. It's only until very recently that people have had to live with planes flying overhead and freeways and busy streets close. If you think even up to very recently in human history in the early 1900's at the dawn of the automobile, there were no planes and very few cars. Even if you lived in a town or city, the worst was probably the clip clop of a horses going by or a train whistle. And even that would end at dark mostly. So heavy noise is definitely new and to me takes some of your mental peace & relaxation away. Especially if your a person that doesn't have the TV on all the time.

But of course it's a trade-off, if you want to live close to a downtown city center, you gotta suck it up. But you can with research find areas that are still urban but avoid being the flight path and carefully pick something not on a busy street and still get something pretty quiet. But it takes a ton of research and lot's of looking around. I got a place relatively close to downtown Seattle that I hear very little car noise and no freeway buzz noise, but I did overlook the flight path since I'm so new to town and was in a rush to get into an apartment.

[reader51]

I'm with Idunn.
Four years ago, I bought a house in Portland, OR. It was THREE miles from the airport. (That was stupid, I know.) One Saturday morning right after moving, the Air National Guard did exercises. It was like shock and awe in Baghdad. It was so mind-boggling loud you felt like war had come to Portland. I'd been in the house a week. My realtor got quite the email that day. Luckily, that really didn't happen much. Also, we were not under the flight path. But every morning at five, we'd lay in bed and hear the engines start up and the takeoffs.
I consider myself a fully certifiable crazy person on the matter of noise. Idunn is right. We have no clue as to what silence is. We don't value it in the least. You cannot enter a cafe or a restaurant in Seattle, I should say Capitol Hill in Seattle, and not experience head banging music that could raise the dead. I just moved to a new apt on Capitol Hill to get away from noise. Outside by the parking lot there is a restaurant fan, there are planes overhead, but this street and this building itself is very, very quiet. Windows close, fingers crossed.

[Polymorphist]

I just took a gander at the FAA instrument charts for SeaTac and they definitely include both departure and approach paths over Capitol Hill. According to the Port of Seattle website, southbound approaches are the norm about 65% of the year for SeaTac due to our weather, especially in winter/spring, so most of what you are hearing on Capitol Hill are aircraft on approach to the airport. Air traffic into/out of SeaTac decreases sharply toward 11pm and doesn't really pick up again until about 5:30am or so.

[Nutrynion]

Hello there. So, I've been living in Seattle since 1996. I have always lived on Capitol Hill. Well, in my desperate search on the Internet to find some reference to this very issue, I've come here. It just all seems so sudden that within the last week or so, starting at around 6am and going literally all day, I'm retired and I do not work so I am home most of the time, I constantly am hearing the same plane or planes fly over LITERALLY every 5 minutes or so. It is absolutely driving me insane. I can deal with sounds of cars beeping, honking, driving by, construction going on. But the plane is almost so persistent and on the dot it is like Chinese water torture. DRIP..... DRIP.... you can count on it and it really irks me that they can't fly more over the freeway or Lake Washington. Who or how can we contact anyone to make a change to this?

[Polymorphist]

Originally Posted by Nutrynion

Who or how can we contact anyone to make a change to this?

You might try contacting the FAA, they have a large office here in the Seattle area. In the past noise complaints have resulted in restricting air traffic during overnight hours.

[Nutrynion]

Yeah I'm going to have to try. It is actually worse now. Almost every minute or less. And it's not like a jet plane its a smaller plane. Like the kind for private jets or flying banners. It is absolute rubbish.