If you’re a property owner of a railroad apartment, you’re likely familiar with its unique layout. Rooms run parallel, with walls shared with each of your neighbors on all sides. Therefore, sound can travel between apartment units, making it difficult to manage if your tenants begin to complain about noise levels affecting them.
As a property investor, your properties will be successful based on how happy your tenants are. Growing turnover rates and negative reviews are primarily linked to tenant frustration over noise issues. Noise issues are amplified in railroad apartments, where sound can travel much faster because there are fewer barriers to bounce off than in traditional apartment buildings. In light of that, continue reading below to learn how we can maintain quiet time for tenants in railroad apartments.
Planning for Quiet Hours in a Railroad Apartment
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Setting Designated Quiet Times
Start by determining which hours are appropriate based on how residents actually use the building. Most multi-family residences assume people will be sleeping or resting from approximately 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Therefore, those are the standard expected hours of quiet time.
You shouldn’t just copy the standard hours of operation; you should also consider who your tenants are: Are they remote-working parents or young professionals? This context will help develop your schedule. You can also manage quiet hours in your apartment by communicating your schedule with your roommates. This will help establish the rhythm and rules for all tenants and help reduce the amount of complaints between cohabitants before they occur.
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Negotiating Schedules
If you’re considering creating a new policy on quiet hours, it is important to discuss them with your tenants before putting any policies in place. A simple conversation, or even just a quick email check-in, can be very revealing about a tenant’s routines. In a railroad apartment setting, these situations make a big difference because sound travels freely throughout the unit. Once you have determined everyone’s schedule, look for natural timeframes or windows where defined quiet hours make sense for the entire building.
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Importance of Consistency and Communication
Establishing consistency is the backbone of your quiet hours policy being enforceable. If you strictly enforce the policy against one tenant and ignore it for another, you create a potential for conflict between tenants and a Fair Housing complaint from the affected tenant. All tenants in the building should know that the rules are enforced equally for all tenants.
Communication is equally important as consistency. When noise-related activity is historically higher, such as at the beginning of summer, or during major holidays, send a friendly email reminder to all tenants about the quiet hours policy in advance of the anticipated increased noise. If you have any common areas within the building, post your quiet hours policy there. The clearer your policy is, the less you should have to get involved when noise is an issue.
Creating a Quiet-Friendly Environment
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Room Modifications
When creating a noise-free space in a railroad-style apartment, the first thing to think about is how you are going to use each room. No need for a complete renovation; you just need to make some smart changes in order to reduce and block sound in the areas of most travel.
The step is to soften up hard surfaces. Everyday noises that would normally reverberate through connected rooms will be dampened by the addition of rugs, carpets, and furniture with extra padding.
Next, let’s focus on the common walls. Add bookcases, large armories, or acoustic panels along those walls as a sound barrier. This will help limit the distance sound can travel.
Finally, consider gaps. Use caulking and weather-stripping on doors and windows, and fill small holes and cracks to keep sound from passing between spaces. Making these minor, conscious changes to your home will not only reduce noise but also help you create a sound-friendly home.
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Isolating Layout from Walls
The first step in creating a quiet environment in a railroad apartment is how you treat the walls. Although you can’t rebuild the walls, you can still lessen the amount of noise that goes through the walls. By treating your shared walls as “buffer zones”, you can place furniture against the common wall to create more mass and block sound from traveling.
In addition to adding mass, you can also add soft materials such as heavy curtains, fabric panels, and wall-hung area rugs to the common wall. There are also small gaps between door frames, electrical outlets, and baseboards that allow sound to escape. By sealing these areas, you can help contain sound in each individual room.
Exploring what is a railroad apartment highlights the importance of spatial design in layout planning. When the rooms in a space are directly connected, creating isolation has more to do with making it harder for sound to move from one area to another than with perfection. By rearranging the rooms and using common materials to create sound barriers, you can create a more peaceful environment for renters.
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Encouraging Calm with Lighting & Ambience
If you want your railroad apartment to be quiet-friendly, you have to create a quiet atmosphere in the apartment itself. Light is more important in creating that mood than most investors think. As soon as you switch from direct, harsh overhead light to softer, more diffused light, you will create a more calming, less stimulating environment.
There is a lot of opportunity for you to influence this in a very subtle way. Providing your tenants with table lamps, dimmer switches, and additional layers of soft light will create a much softer look and feel in the room once the sun has gone down. Soft textures, such as curtains, area rugs, or upholstery, absorb sound and help create a quieter-feeling environment.
Final Thought
The management of quiet hours in a railroad apartment involves more than the mere posting of a policy on the wall. It requires the proper placement of furnishings, effective communication, and an intentional focus on each action taken by the owner or investor.
When you line up all those components simultaneously, you help address the noise issue and create a place for tenants to live happily. Happy tenants will stay in your property longer, complain less, and take better care of your property. This return is well worth the effort.