To architects or engineers - when you visit an apartment to rent for your family, what helps you assess its soundproofing qualities?
In Ch you visit an apartment for a very short time (and sometimes at hours of the day where there is no one in the whole building). I am quite sensitive to noise and I came to realize, especially sensitive to impact noise. Since we moved to the current apartment I sleep very fragmented because we hear:
- steps all over the apartment
- lots of thuds and clacks and pocks from the floor above. We know whenever they pull a chair, drop a corn of rice,you get the picture
- when they roll the gliding door, when they open and close doors and cabinet doors in the apartment above we're well informed/awoken from sleep
- when blinds are manipulated
- we hear the shower (this has an almost 360 degree echo in all of our apartment) & toilet flushing
- singing and talks in kitchen/bathroom
The neighbours above are very young and have completely different schedules than a mum of 2 young children. They wake me up after I fall asleep early evening, then keep waking me up until 1:30 - 2 when they close the last blind (and then I don't manage to fall asleep for at least another hour because i've already been woken 2-4 times.....) and then another neighbour opens the blinds to prepare for work at 5:30 in the morning. I am desperate to get some normal rest, I fear I might lose my job as I am really exhausted! I can't wear earplugs for obvious reasons - I am a 24h mum....
We got an offer for an apartment in the neighbourhood as we wouldn't like to uproot the kids from their surroundings. But what public sources of info or what indicators can I use to assess whether it is somewhat better than the current one or not? Year built seems to me quite a gamble, as I lived in a 50s building for 5 years without such problems, whereas this 50s building we picked next is a catastrophe!
Maybe an architect/engineer knows where and what to search for (I tried to find the EGID number, but even if a renovation year appears, there's no details about what has been done). Of course we asked the current tenants, but given the pressure to find a Nachmieter, we don't fully trust the "we hear nothing" from them. The apartment is at the very upper limit of our budget (actually a bit above, but my husband is ready to pay more just for us both to sleep again normally) and I'd hate to go through the moving effort without any real benefit in terms of rest.
I appreciate any advice from more experienced tenants...