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View Full Version : noise in old multistoried houses


Tundra
August 9th, 2009, 11:27 PM
For my miniatures, I'm wondering how much noise would filter down stairs (or upstairs), in an old, stone, house, with high ceilings?
I've designed (and had built years back) a dollhouse where the first floor kitchen/scullery has a staircase up to the hallway that the bathroom, linen press, and big hallway, are in. (along with the guest bedroom, study, main bedroom, and parlour) (Also on the ground floor is the drawing room and dining room.)
Above the adult bedrooms, is the nursery, again with an open stairwell. The kids have their own bedrooms, but the room that the stairs are on is their playroom/schoolroom, so there might be noise that filters down to the adult bedrooms. How much baby crying might they hear if baby is in her room with the door shut, and one floor above? How thick were floors?

Then, the children's floor leads up to the servant's quarters, they have a hall up there, (though most of the day they hang out in the kitchen area if they're 'free') because the wife of the house believes that even servants need some personal space (it's set in late victorian times, where that sort of attitude was starting), and it was the only place free. Would their mealtimes be able to be heard by the kids?

... I'm trying to think of solutions. I could possibly build walls and doors at tops or bottoms of stairs, however that would block views of the rooms. Maybe I could build them out of perspex and it'd be like 'in reality, this is a wall, but for the purposes of this dollhouse, it's clear so you can see past it'.

... but yeah. how noisy? The ceilings are 10 foot, and walls would be thick. I don't know how thick floors were.

Mum says I can't compare it with modern life apartments with their thin walls and lowish ceilings.

Oh and, though it is set in the 1890s, the house was 'built' in regency times, when I believe it was not so strict on 'there should be no noise in the house from children or servants or anything!!!' in a house this size (ie, not the nobility).

Tundra
August 14th, 2009, 09:57 AM
No one's walked around in an old museum or something?

KageJim
August 14th, 2009, 11:45 AM
I have, but I never really took careful note of the acoustics of such buildings. Generally sound does move through them much more freely than newer buildings, is all I can really say.

AXJ
August 18th, 2009, 11:20 PM
Best frame of reference I have is my friend's Charleston row house built in the mid-late 1800s. 10' ceilings, plaster walls, and good heavy old-fashioned framing. You can hear AMAZINGLY little, upstairs to downstairs. You have to REALLY yell from downstairs to be heard upstairs, unless you're yelling directly up the stairwell. They have 6 month old twins, and he can play guitar hero at fairly loud volume in their downstairs parlor and not wake up the babies directly overhead upstairs.

You can actually also hear amazingly little room-to-room, also. I slept next room over to the twins' bedroom and didn't wake up to their crying at all, with their door open and mine closed. Our friends leave both doors open AND use a baby monitor so they can hear them at night.