Apartment resident Weesp upstairs neighbors exceed noise standard, but apartment resident is proven wrong
A rented house in a flat in Weesp should not be adapted because the downstairs neighbor experiences noise nuisance. The court ruled that yesterday.
The downstairs neighbour, who has lived on the second floor of the flat since 1997, said to have had the last of the upstairs neighbors since October 2020. He said hearing noise caused by walking, running, vacuuming and music. In May 2021, he had a noise investigation carried out. That investigation showed that the sound was ‘clearly perceptible’, ‘annoying’ and ‘unacceptably noisy’.
Subsequently, the owner of the rented house on the third floor replaced the floor with a PVC floor with subfloor, which had been laid floating. The downstairs neighbor continued to hear noise and had another investigation carried out last year. This time the outcome was that most rooms met the legal requirements under the limited Building Decree 2012, but the bedroom did not.
The subdistrict court judge writes in the judgment that the 2012 Building Decree does not apply to this flat built in 1966. “Furthermore, the subdistrict court considers it important that the most recent noise measurement shows that only in the bedroom there has been a ruling of a limited exceedance of the noise standard from the 2012 Building Decree. The subdistrict court judge finds that this exceedance is limited in scope and occurs in a room where plaintiff is, it must be assumed, only a limited part of a day.”
The judge also points out that a new floor will be laid that meets the noise reduction standard used by, among others, Associations of Owners (VVEs). In addition, sound may not be guaranteed through the floor, but through the walls. However, the VVE is about the walls and not about the landlord. Furthermore, the occupant of the flat on the second floor could also take measures himself, for example by providing the ceilings in his home with sound insulation.