Planning a Super Bowl party? Getting a new 58-inch HDTV with surround sound?

If you’re not, your condo neighbor might be. And if you are the type of person who likes to spend Super Bowl Sunday in quiet contemplation, you might be in for a rough evening.

In fact, noisy neighbors are one of the most commonly cited reasons why people move out of multi-family housing, apartments and condos, and scoot out to suburbia to find themselves a single-family home with plenty of space between their house and their neighbor’s.

If I had to guess, I’d say nearly everybody who lives in stacked housing has a nickname or an inventive story for their upstairs neighbor. We had one woman we figured must vacuum eight hours a day; another couple we nicknamed the walruses for reasons I cannot explain in this family newspaper.

Creating quieter multi-family housing could save the world, and not just because you would get more sleep. As think tanks and urban planners realize that the old model of far-flung subdivisions is resource-consuming, they are now urging people to consider compact city living, or at least denser development in suburban areas close to train lines.

For that to have a real impact on our resource conservation, municipalities and developers are going to have to make stacked living more appealing to those who have abandoned it or have never lived that way.

Some of these efforts have already begun. Newer high rises have started sprouting green roof gardens and dog walks for those who might miss having a back yard. Some have made location a priority so that residents are near grocery and hardware stores. And some have added soundproofing techniques to their walls and ceilings.

That’s important because some of the accoutrements of modern living have made stacked living noisier. Surround sound and the popularity of bare wood flooring add ambient and percussive noise to the units to the side and below, said Mitch Newman, owner of Stratagem Construction and Habitar Design in Chicago.

Hardwood floors are not new to Chicago homes, but where they might have been covered with shag carpet 25 years ago, now they are refinished and beautiful – and noisy for neighbors below, especially when you are clomping around in your 3-inch Manolo Blahniks.

Newman’s company uses several construction techniques to make new units quieter. Several variations on those techniques can also be used to retrofit noisy units into quieter ones, he said.

“Between floors we do some standard things. We create two different sound barriers,” he said. Between floors, they create a subfloor, put on sound board, then a layer of plywood on top of that and the actual flooring on top of that. Construction experts urge builders not to use nails and screws since they carry sound, but Newman says he doesn’t see a lot of difference.

In higher priced units he adds a layer of concrete on the floor, which completely stops the noise.

“Ten years ago, in our apartments people could hear their neighbor’s radio waking them up in the morning, but now you cannot hear that at all,” said Newman, who makes a point of living in his own buildings.

In one of his buildings, the flooring actually floated on top of a layer of cork, which was on top of concrete. “I had a cocktail party and invited the neighbors downstairs,” he said. “They told me they could not hear our party below.”

That kind of floor construction adds around $3 to $4 a square foot to the costs, he said.

To dampen sound traveling between walls, he concentrates on the living room areas, since that is where televisions and sound systems create the most noise.

“In many of our areas we actually create [another] wall between the two units,” he said. Newman follows the best practice technique of offsetting wall studs so that the studs for one unit do not attach to the studs for the unit next door. “So you have drywall, studs, drywall, second stud wall and more drywall,” he said. In between the drywall, he sprays in sound-dampening insulation.

“By separating the studs you eliminate a lot of vibratory movement through there,” he said, “and with another layer of drywall, sound has to go through three walls.” He also uses “green glue,” a special polymer that absorbs sound energy, to close gaps.

When raw edges are joined with green glue, sound cannot travel along the wall materials. He also tends to design his buildings so that closets are set against the party wall. Newman says many contractors don’t build this way due to costs, but he also says the costs are not that high.

Adding soundproofing between living room walls of two units might cost around $1,000, but that cost would be borne by two units. Retrofitting existing units is also possible, he said, and could cost less than you think.

While some people start with a sound engineer to determine how the noise is traveling, he thinks it’s easier and cheaper just to try one thing, then add another if that doesn’t work.

“You have to look at the specifics of what’s bothering them,” he said. “We had a couple who said they could hear the neighbor’s kids playing in their bedroom through the wall into their master bedroom.”

His first suggestion was to put up a Ľ-inch layer of drywall, affixed to the existing wall with a layer of green glue. The green glue would stop a lot of sound. If that didn’t work, he would add another layer of drywall with more green glue.

You can also blow insulation into the ceiling to stop noise that travels that way. Another suggestion is to offer to buy carpet for your neighbor.

Newman is using these kinds of sound barriers in his latest building, Lake Park Gateway II, a 23-unit development in North Kenwood/Oakland. Eight are available immediately. The two- and three-bedroom units range from $199,900 to $339,900.

Floors have three-quarter-inch plywood subflooring, a layer of five-eighths-inch sound board, a second three-eighths-inch subfloor, followed by the standard five-eighths-inch bamboo flooring.

“Our bamboo flooring is super-tough carbonized, strand-woven and dark stained,” Newman said.

To add additional sound insulation, the developer blows in 12 inches of cellulose fiber insulation in floor joist spaces between units. Party walls between units feature double drywall plus a layer of “green glue,” a viscous polymer sound proofing material.

For more information about the development, visit www.strategemhomebuilders.com.