Just bought a condo.

[pacergal]

Congratulations.
Looks like a nice place, I think you will enjoy this next phase of your retirement.

 

[skyking1]

That looks pretty sweet, Jerry. The garage on top of all that up sized space is nice.

 

[Cognito]

Congratulations here too. We were able to find a rancher condo with an attached two car garage. 5 feet to the large kitchen. My first garage. My new VW Atlas fits in there well.
Enjoy your place.

 

[Koolau]

Our condo building is a concrete egg crate. You simply do not hear the neighbors through the walls, though everyone leaves windows open so noise can escape one condo and enter the other. BUT, it's never been an issue for us. The ISSUE in a medium high rise is that street noice come ups (just picture the ancient amphitheaters - the ancients figured out that a low stage and staggered seating up a hill was all that was needed to hear well.)

Our garage is a "parking structure." It has security with a gate and cameras. The walk to the apartment from the garage is significant but manageable.

Management via HOA is non-heavy-handed but can be firm when it needs to be. So called "house-keeping" aka condition of your window screens has been our only point of contention, for the most part. YMMV

 

[Jerry1]

The ISSUE in a medium high rise is that street noice come ups (just picture the ancient amphitheaters - the ancients figured out that a low stage and staggered seating up a hill was all that was needed to hear well.)

Interesting. I was wondering about why, on a recent trip, which included a stay on the 11th floor of a hotel, I could hear so much street noise. It seemed odd to be so loud from so far away.

 

[Koolau]

Interesting. I was wondering about why, on a recent trip, which included a stay on the 11th floor of a hotel, I could hear so much street noise. It seemed odd to be so loud from so far away.

I did some "noise" stuff in my Masters program but it was more like "What's the total sound in dB of two sources of noise each at 80 dB?" Hint: It's all done with logarithms. (about 83 dB)

General sound abatement methods were covered - the most perfect sound absorber in a room is (wait for it) an open window! 100%!

We did touch on general stuff like the way sound travels and leads to auditoria of the general type discovered a couple of thousand years ago.

I eventually did some sound testing on empl*yees at Megacorp. We did have some very high noise levels in parts of the plant.


Coolest thing was to w*rk in an anechoic chamber with 96% sound absorption. You can hear your own heart beat. Way cool!

 

[skyking1]

Interesting. I was wondering about why, on a recent trip, which included a stay on the 11th floor of a hotel, I could hear so much street noise. It seemed odd to be so loud from so far away.

We are in a very quiet neighborhood in the tall trees, with the exception of dirt bike noises now and then. When we went looking for view property I learned that if you get a view, you get a "hear" too. What you hear depends on what you can see. If you see the highway, Bingo! Distance does not help as much when you have line of sight.
:Luckily the new view place is sheltered from the nearby highway by terrain.

 

[Koolau]

We are fortunate that noise after "w*rking hours" is usually curtailed - except for the yahoos that like to run their mopeds and hot rods up and down the street occasionally (I assume they like to hear their exhaust noise bouncing back at them from the buildings).

During the day, it can be rather noisy with constant traffic and frequent sounds of trimming and mowings, etc. BUT we can close our sliders and reduce the noise by several dB. It's generally quite comfortable temperature wise, so closing off street noise isn't a major concession.

And, you get used to the sound level. When returning to the mainland, I notice the quiet - and it takes me a couple of nights to be able to "get used" to the quiet! Who knew?

 

[Golden Mean]

This isn’t our exact unit but it’s the same model. Parking is our own two car garage. Though, what passes for a 2 car garage in some of these places leaves a lot to be desired. Ours is 20x21. I’ve seen them a bit under 19x19. I think getting my mid size suv and my full size truck in it will be a little tight. There is a single step to get from the garage into the house.

View attachment 55404

This unit, to me, looks like effectively a SFH. I'd bet the walls between units is a brick or concrete fire wall. Looks really nice!

 

[rkser]

This unit looks nice, all comforts of a 2000 sq ft house without the maintenance headaches.
Congratulations !!