Loud staircase noises from the neighbor's house - Is the staircase properly decoupled?

Hello dear forum community,

I have a question:

We have now been living in our new house (semi-detached house) for a few weeks.

When our neighbor walks up or down the stairs, you can hear it quite well in our half. The other way around is the same.

According to the builder, everything is "fine" (as always) – which we strongly doubt given our shared history.

Now, the stair construction should be decoupled from the wall by means of a plastic sleeve (see photos). However, it seems to me that this sleeve simply rests around the suspension and there is still metal on metal (so no decoupling has been done).

Does anyone maybe have experience with stair constructions? How can this be checked or does it look correct in our case?

Thank you very much for your answers!

I am not an expert in this regard, but this plastic sleeve cannot decouple anything, since it is impossible for it to be "in between"? Otherwise, the staircase would be hanging in the air?

Yes, I think so too. I would like to take a look at how the suspension actually looks. But what is this [Manschette] supposed to achieve? It only covers the suspension. Unfortunately, you can't expect a decent answer from the developer.

I am not an expert either, but the decoupling is probably meant to be between the wooden step and the iron? Does each step rest on such a cuff? The fact is, it doesn't work. Whatever it is supposed to be, apparently it doesn't work like this. However, enforcing this as a defect will probably be difficult.

Now it is such that the stair construction should be decoupled from the wall by means of a plastic collar (see photos). However, it seems to me that this collar is simply resting around the suspension and metal is still lying on metal (so no decoupling has been done).

Funny, your builder should make a "dear children, please don’t try this at home" explanatory video about this "lifehack." There is a special product from Schöck for this (he probably didn’t want to pay pharmacy prices). Check here: and , there are relevant reading tips for your problem.

Insanity what ideas people come up with who should actually have more knowledge of physics due to their profession. Our stairs of the semi-detached house were not allowed to be attached to the party wall (nor were sockets or similar allowed here!)

Our staircase therefore has air to the party wall and is "only" attached to the other walls, which works quite well if you want. From the upper floor I can hear the stairs a bit, from the other semi-detached house not at all (really zero, but that's because I live downstairs on the right, the stairs are upstairs on the left ;-) )

In building class 2, if I’m not mistaken semi-detached houses fall under this, the sound insulation requirements are not as high as in multi-family houses. But there is some standard and I don’t believe it can be met with this rather creative construction. Of course, it also always depends on how the party wall was constructed (1- or 2-leaf, properly separated with sound insulation wool (fire protection) in between or nicely built bridging sound transmission with leftover food, etc.)