Selling misery by the square metre

One of the worst feelings in apartments (after the one when your home dips into negative equity) is when you hear drilling, sawing and hammering in the apartment above you at the same time as a van from “Dodgy Dave’s Discount Carpets” has taken up residence in your visitor parking.
Why would you care?  Because Dodgy Dave may be there to rip up carpets, not put them down, while he’s installing new, probably uninsulated floorboards. One of our readers has just been through that very experience – prompting a little investigation on our behalf.
QUESTION: I have just had a floating timber floor installed in the unit above me and although we are in the process of solving the ensuing noise problem but I had to do a fair amount of research with companies supplying and installing floating floors.
Posing as a interested buyer I found that no sales people mentioned possible noise transmission to the apartment below. In fact, the only noise reduction they referred to was for the benefit of the apartment where the floor was being laid.
Underlay brochures are difficult to obtain and even then most of the technical information in them is unsubstantiated; it is impossible to get authoritative test certificates, although in some instances the names of supposed testing authorities are included.
Can’t these people be pinged for false advertising? The whole industry is a sham. – HS
ANSWER:  Human nature dictates that if something is available for sale, we assume it must be OK.  And timber flooring sales people are not going to burden you with practicalities if they might get in the way of a deal.
Sure, there are various avenues in strata laws and by-laws for fixing this after the event, but considering the misery it causes to downstairs neighbours, followed by the major irritation for both parties in getting it fixed, something surely could be done at the source of the problem.
How hard would it be for the Office of Fair Trading to demand that the carpet and timber flooring sellers have to provide potential customers pamphlet with information about noise insulation in apartments?
Most apartment owners would be happy to consider their neighbours if only the experts – the flooring sellers – provided them with the facts.

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