When you live in an apartment building with other people, you’re bound to encounter at least one tenant who is a bit noisier than the rest. Whether it’s excessively loud music, lovemaking or whatever, here’s how to approach the situation without being an equally obnoxious neighbour.
I’ve been on both sides of this equation, and the two times I have been the noisy neighbour I wasn’t aware of it. It’s hard to tell what level of noise makes it through the walls and what stays put, so you do have to rely on your neighbours to some extent to really know if there’s a problem. That means summoning the courage to confront them about the noise issue directly. We’re going to look at how to do that effectively, and your additional options should approaching the situation as a rational human being prove futile. (These strategies are also useful if you’re living in a house; drums can travel a long way.)
Option #1: Communicate Through The Walls
When noise is a problem that’s keeping you awake at night, chances are you don’t want to make yourself presentable and head over to your neighbor’s apartment to complain. You want to be sleeping, not having an unpleasant conversation. While that conversation may be inevitable, sometimes you can solve the problem without going too far. Just knock on the wall where the noise is coming from to demonstrate that loud sound does travel and sometimes that will be enough to get people to keep the noise level down.
Option #2: Suggest A Plan
I posed this question to Twitter and Facebook to get a general idea of how people think this situation should be handled and how they’d prefer to be told if they were offending others. The overwhelming response, neglecting jokes like “just be a adult about it…throw a cup of piss at them” (my favourite), was to have a brief and honest conversation about the problem. I agree, but would like to add that I think it helps to suggest a reasonable plan.
I like to sing and play the piano in my apartment, and for whatever reason I tend to get the urge to do this during the later hours of the night. When I was younger, I used to play almost ritualistically around midnight or 1:00 AM in the morning. In an older apartment with unusually thick walls (but a very thin door) I used to get visitors who’d want to come in and listen or play along. When I moved to a much smaller building with thinner walls where I wasn’t among other restless kids, most people just wanted to sleep. My downstairs neighbour came up one night and knocked on my door to ask me to keep it quiet, but in addition to that he suggested a plan for the future. He said (and this isn’t an exact quote because I don’t remember fully): “We can hear you singing through the floor when we’re trying to sleep. It’s cool if you want to do that, but could you do it before midnight?” I agreed and that was that. No more noise problems from me.
What makes this effective is that the complaint isn’t telling the noisy neighbour to “shut up and stop having fun so I can get my beauty sleep”, but rather saying “I’m cool with what you’re doing, just not right now. Let’s figure out a better time.” This worked for me, and I think will work for most people who are reasonable and/or just don’t know they’re being too loud.
But what about loud…uh…sex?
Most people are uncomfortable with having a conversation regarding any kind of noise, so telling someone to quiet down when they’re engaged in sexual activity is a more complex issue. You run the risk of embarrassing your neighbours, sometimes so much that they’ll be in denial. It’s also relevant that they do have a right to make noise so long as it’s not causing a significant disturbance, and your discomfort with the type of noise doesn’t really play into it. As with any noise complaint, the same tactics apply: ask politely for your neighbours to keep it down when it’s late, or shift their activities to an earlier time. If you feel uncomfortable broaching the subject in person, you can always write a short and polite note. If the problem continues, however, you may need to handle the issue face-to-face.
Option #3: Contact The Management (Or The Police)
When you can’t manage the situation yourself, that’s what your building’s management is for. In Australia you’ll probably find the complaint needs to be referred to the body corporate via your strata manager. Very occasionally an entire apartment block has a single owner, but even then you’ll probably still need to talk to strata. If you’re renting, you’ll probably have to contact your estate agent first.
But you need to remember a few things. People are allowed to make noise during the day, and even during the evening. Some people draw the line at midnight and others a bit earlier. It will depends on where you live, who you live with, and who’s managing the property. When you move into an apartment it’s good to ask about the noise policies and when quiet hours are expected.
When I moved into my most recent apartment, on the third day someone called the police to issue an anonymous noise complaint around 10:00 PM. I’d been playing a mellow song on a loop while I cleaned the apartment, and I thought it was at a reasonable volume. When the police knocked on my door they apologised for coming by because when they heard the volume of the music they thought it was at a reasonable volume. I offered to turn it off but they said it was fine and left. This situation was essentially left unresolved because 1) the person who filed the complaint was asking for what the police deemed an unreasonably low noise level, and 2) I would have been happy to work out a compromise with the complainant if they’d simply bothered to come talk to me. The takeaway is this: if you’re having issues with a potentially noisy neighbour, be sure to consider what’s reasonable and try talking to them first. If your first reaction is to resort to more drastic measures, they might just backfire.
Option #4: Creatively Utilise Technology
If you can’t get your point across with a note, simple conversation, or with help from the authorities, sometimes a little technology can make the difference. One of our favourite tips of all time is communicating with your Wi-FI network’s SSID. That means giving your Wi-Fi network a name like “BeQuietApartment1121” or “TurnDownYourMusic” so that neighbours will see your message when they’re looking to get online. Although this method is very clever, its success rate is limited severely by the fact that your neighbours have to actually view their Wi-Fi options prior to connecting. If they have their own Wi-Fi and aren’t stealing someone else’s, their computer is connecting them automatically. Chances are they won’t see a thing if they’ve got a router of their own.
In the even the problem is really bad and the result of excessively loud music, you can hijack your neighbour’s speakers to force them to be quiet. With a few cheap tools you can transmit your voice into their speakers to ask them to quiet down, play some really annoying music to get your revenge, or probably even blow out their speakers if you’re feeling particularly evil (although chances are that will end in some unfortunate repercussions for you, so don’t do it). This isn’t a tactic you should employ unless you’re truly out of options, but it doesn’t hurt to have it available when you are.
A Few More Suggestions
Hopefully this post has provided some useful advice for dealing with the unfortunately too common problem of dealing with noisy neighbours. Before we call it a day, however, I just wanted to highlight a few suggestions from Twitter and Facebook to provide a few other opinions on the matter.
Anne Earney:
I’d hope our neighbours would come by and let us know if we were bothering them. However, we did have a problem with some renters in a four-family behind our house where we ended up calling the police. The renters often put their dog out on the second floor balcony, where it barked all night. At 3am, I’m just not going to politely knock on someone’s door and ask them to let their dog in.
Jesse Miller-Riley:
A note or a polite conversation is wise…being petulant or obnoxiously retaliatory will only make the situation worse. And if they don’t listen to reason, then get the management involved. Fighting fire with fire is for school-aged children.
An Anonymous Friend:
Write an anonymous note and put it up in the building. It’s amazing how powerful shame can be.
Shawn Wayne:
Tell them you would like to take matters into your own hands to deal with this like adults, and tell them to keep it down, and if the situation doesn’t improve, tell them you will contact apartment management if it keeps happening. If that doesn’t help, get all your neighbours together to file complaints against them.
José:
Just say that you have a friend over with a baby that is sleeping.
Chandra Batra:
It sucks because I live in a really crappy apartment with paper thin walls. I would try to tolerate it because if you can hear them chances are they can hear you!
And since our own Whitson Gordon is a noisy neighbour, let’s give him the last word:
I am a noisy arse neighbour. If my neighbours don’t like my loud music, I really, really would like them to knock on my door and politely say something — that’s all they need to do.
The problem is it’s very difficult to know how loud you’re being from someone else’s house/apartment. I try not to go crazy, but I don’t know what level of volume my neighbours can hear or not hear — if they just said “hey dude, you were pretty loud today, but yesterday I didn’t hear anything”, then I have a much better idea of the cap I need to stay below.
Good luck! We hope this helps you find a quiet night’s rest.
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Comments
37 responses to “How To Complain About Your Noisy Neighbours”
The chance that your neighbour has the intelligence or empathy to agree to your request is quite low. Don’t forget he/she, more likely he, was ignorant enough to pump up the volume in the first place. Chances are they’ve already sized you up and found you inadequate and not a threat. Basically, assholes will always be assholes, bogans will always be bogans and the world will keep on spinning!
Not necessarily. I find most people are more clueless than malicious. Chances are they don’t even know you exist, much less have ‘sized you up’.
You may have a point, however if they are as you say truly clueless, that is still an indictment on their ability to feel for and understand those that are around them! Basically selfish and ignorant is not an excuse!
Never a truer word has been said, in fact I do believe repeat offenders are ignorant & arrogant & get off on generally pissing people off …
My roommate found a good way to let neighbours know that they were being too loud in the bedroom. When the noise stopped he gave them a short round of applause.
Hi Big Mac I have a problem with my neighbours above me, in regards to noise she is terrible, she creates loud sound, such as dropping (like a log) rolling on the floor direct to my bedroom, kitchen area, and living room, Morning, Afternoon and Evening, I would like to gave her a short round of applause and see if she’s stop. Thank you for enlighten my situation with this Scarf woman.
Some people complain too much though, for example my friends had a complaint from the lady who lives below them that they “flush their toilet too loudly”…
Hhahaha! Maybe she’d prefer them to use a bucket and dump it on her balcony instead 😛
We had neighbours who backed on to ours how had occasional noisy parties until 1-2am. The police were unwilling to do anything which was particularly annoying as my young kids were kept awake for hours. This went on for months. In the end I connected a small remote control circuit to a relay. I test fitted this to the inside of one of our domestic sockets with connections to earth and neutral. As soon as I triggered the remote it tripped the power to the whole house (just a few milliamps will cause this, so no dangerous levels).
I intended to fit this inside one of the outdoor plugs belonging to the noisy neighbours (too noisy + too late = click > wonderful silence), but when I drove past their house there was the most glorious thing I’ve seen in years – a For Sale sign!
Whilst living in Preston (which I strongly suggest you don’t), we discovered the absolute pig-headed morons out there who truely don’t give a flying firetruck about those living in close proximity. Not to mention police who equally don’t care (unless you put on the sick and elderly routine to get them to do a patrol).
Yapping fluffy white things 24/7, horrendious music, singing, instruments and best of all, domestic arguments in another language and accompaning sounds that make you wonder where they’re going to dump the body.
Our solution was to try to talk to them, which failed. In fact, it got worse, and we were met with racism on an incredible scale. Basically we were told that because we were anglo, we wern’t welcome, and to “look around you milky”, as we were the only non-asian family in the street. The same family also had a swipe at the Greeks and Indians on the adjoining street.
So we ended up resorting to fighing fire with fire. Which does work, given you choose your ammunition carefully. Al Jolson is one of ours. On repeat. Loud enough to hear Swanee a few houses away.
I also took up the bagpipes. And practiced next to the fence.
Let’s just say, they got the message, and, aside from fluffy yappy, they quietened down to a level of tolerance.
Of course they tried to push the boundary from time to time, but good old Swanee came out and they hushed up again.
We eventually moved out after a number of other related problems to that area. We couldn’t afford to risk our child’s health or safety in an area like that.
I live in an annoyingly (at times) secure unit block, where my key only gives me access to my floor, ground floor, and the carpark. I’d love to be able to knock on the doors of my noisy neighbours above and below, but I can’t. The neighbours above choose to watch action movies at maximum volume using their surround sound system at 2am. I’ve used anonymous notes in the lift (twice) and they seem to have settled down. The neighbours below come home at 4am and start up the thumping music, and also sit outside on their balcony, talking and smoking. I’ve had success yelling out to them from my balcony – when they can hear me over the music. Coming into summer I’m sure it’ll happen more and more, so it might be time for me to email the agent (I’m renting).
in NSW there are state restrictions for noise pollution
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/noise/neighbourhoodnoise.htm
If your neighbour can hear you from their bedroom, then you are too loud.
earphones were invented for a reason.
And if you want to party at 12 in the morning, go to the freaking pub. There’s one on every block. or 3 if you living in my building.
i hate my neighbour.
Stumbled across this post when trying to find some way to complain about my neighbor. He is very unreasonable and doesn’t really care about anyone else. The government link is a bunch of info, but not really that useful. I did submit a review on http://dontwake.me and have complaint to his landlords many times. Apparently his lease is up in a month or two, So as I sit here and read this post I am counting down the days!! Good post – I will defiantly be changing my SSID. 😀
I live in a block of flats – 6 in total. All the flats are 1 bedroom only and are quite small. As they are made of brick, sounds are blocked out considerably and the tenants are not too bad. There is one though that goes above and beyond the usual level of noise. To make matters worse, they have a 2 year old child. I know that hearing crying and stuff is just normal, however it appears the parents are doing everything they can to piss everyone else off.
They give the child pots and pans to bang with a wooden spoon, they let him bang on the front security door and then when the father comes home from work, he takes the child out to the car and lets him play with the horn. These activities go on ALL day and into the night. Apart form these activities, the mother is yelling and screaming at the husband for all sorts of things over and above the sound of Greek music played at a high decibel.
I have asked them to keep the noise level down, but they don’t seem to take much notice. My plan of attack has now resulted in this:
I check to make sure no one else is at home, the elderly people on the other side of me are quite deaf, so they are not affected, then I arrange my speakers under my bedroom window sill which faces their front door. I then pop 4 different cd’s into my stereo and set it on repeat. I find Pantera, Rage against the Machine, Fear Factory and Slip knot works very well! Within moments, the front door is closed and it’s quiet!
I have just recently moved into an apartment unit in Adelaide. I am living there with my fiancée for about a month and a have now. and out of that month and have the next door neighbour wakes us up at unruly hours two or three times a week, 3am and so on, shouting at fighting.also he listens to awful pop music all the time, i wouldn’t mind if it was something half decent, he is a grown man! its really upsetting as my fiancée works at 6.30 am and I am up very early too. i tired to communicate with him but he just laughs. what can I do about this. are there rules and regulations in Adelaide about this sort of thing?
got next door neighbours that like to party every fridaynight which go’s on all though saturday,to sunday morning very annoying cannt sleep rung the police many of times nothing really get’s done about the noise,the achcol and the flowl language that arises durning the night that’s in the shire of hume in victoria
Hi there,
Can I cancel my very recent rental agreement on the basis of unbearable noise?
Noise produced by cars off the street out side the window of my bedroom and I can’t sleep.
Cheers, Zack
If the noise was not something that you could have reasonably foreseen when you moved in, then the answer is “almost certainly yes”: you are being denied quiet enjoyment, and the landlord is unlikely to be able to remediate.
If you have a smartphone, get a Noise Meter app, and take a log of a period of quiet (with windows open), and then see if you can also log some times when the noise is bad.
The main issue will be whether the noise was ‘foreseeable’ – and that is a ‘reasonable person’ test. So if you leased an apartment with single-glazed windows that backed onto a railway line, you could not then get out of a subsequent lease on the basis that you expected the place to be quiet just because no trains went past when you viewed the place.
Likewise, if the noise of the cars was foreseeable, you might have difficulty.
It’s straightforward in the case where the noise is not foreseeable, or is a specific nuisance (i.e., is the behaviour of a specific set of individuals, and not simply a part of the overall built environment).
In fact this is at the front of my brain at present because we are considering cancelling our own lease renewal (which has been signed, but does not come into effect until March 2013) as a result of the recent behaviour of our neighbours (who are owners, and thus cannot be disciplined by sending police incident numbers to their landlord or real estate agent). We are about to issue private suit against them for nuisance: their teenage twats playing doof-doof rubbish for seven hours yesterday at 12dB above background (as measured – and recorded – in our living room), and well past the watershed the night before.
Fortunately my Lovely is a barrister, so these folks are about to get a harsh lesson in how expensive it is when the aggrieved party takes recourse via suit (rather than ringing the police and trying to get some 20-year-old barely-passed-VCE cop to turn up and tell them to turn it down).
In my experience some of my neighbours I have asked them to turn down loud music and they say yes and do it at that time. But continue to turn it up loud, so it doesn’t matter how many times I ask they just keep doing it. These days I tell them once and if they do it again, I go to the real estate. The problem with this is I don’t know if the Real Estate agent is telling the tenant I am complaining because I’m getting complaints for no reason now???
I had problems with my old neighbours last year. They had their bass coming through my house everyday for hours at a time and it was way to much and started to drive me insane after months of it! Anyway, I wrote them a polite note and put it in their mailbox and the result of this was they did it on purpose at 7am and so anyway, I saw the guy outside and spoke to him about it andhe said all you need to do is come over and ask us to turn it down and then he also said that it wasn’t them (he thinks I am a moron) anyway, they obviously now were aware that it was coming straight through my house but continued to do it anyway so then I called the police and then they stopped but I moved a few weeks later… turns out I was with the same real estate (and still am) the real estate agent said that they weren’t happy with them and that she thought he was a psycho and they were not renewing their lease so hahahahahah to them…. anyway, most people who are loud just have no respect for others and are only concerned for themselves and are totally unreasonable… I considered stabbing him it was soo annoying but he was lucky I have a child to think about. (I am not a violent person, he had driven me too far!)
“But you need to remember a few things. People are allowed to make noise during the day, and even during the evening. ”
Absolutely incorrect, and also absolutely typical of the journalistic dilettantism that pervades discussions like these.
See Environmental Protection Act 1970 (Vic), S48A(3)-(5):
s48A(3) makes it an offence to “cause[] or suffer[] to be emitted unreasonable noise from any residential premises”;
s48A(4) defines ‘uinreasonable’ as having regard to volume, intensity or duration and the time, place and other circumstances in which it is emitted; and
s48A(5) makes it clear that the offence is not circumscribed by violations of the list of prescribed items and times in the Environment Protection (Residential Noise) Regulations 2008 (that is, the items on the Regulations list are AUTOMATICALLY offences, while violations outside of the list are still capable of being offences).
To give some meat to this: if noise can be heard in a living space in a residential premises other than the one that is the source of the noise, an offence is likely. If the noise is more than 5dB above background, then an offence is almost certain. And if it’s of long duration and on multple occasions, then it’s pretty much guaranteed.
There is also s61 of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 – which makes it an offence to cause a nuisance, or knowingly allow or suffer a nuisance to exist on, or emanate from, any land owned or occupied by that person.
And lastly but not leastly, there is also the ‘pure’ common law tort of nuisance, which can be pursued privately (in Mag’s court) by the simple expedient of briefing a barrister.
In summary: if you rely on some lightweight dingleberry journalist to give a dilettante’s overview of what they THINK is the legal situation, you may as well stick a fork in your leg – because it will cause you less pain in the long run… AND you will have to turn your doof-doof music off anyway.
I wholly agree with your comments and appreciate your raising them. It takes a ‘reasonable’ human to change a behaviour that adversely and illegally impacts others. We do not live next to reasonable humans. I’m so sleep deprived and desperate (at the almost constantly high to extreme levels of noise) I didn’t have enough strength on some occasions to feed the will to live.
We’ve been tortured by neighbours living next door for over 2 years. We tried speaking to them countless times politely at every hour between midnight and 7am often several days a week; we’ve emailed details and video to their real estate and been promised they were on their last warning for 1.5 years before we found out after going in in person to speak with the realtor (LJHooker) that that was a lie and the landlord refuses to have them removed because he doesn’t want to lose money; we called the police assistance line countless times (often others had already called but the police have never turn up even when physical violence was reported); contacted their strata with evidence of how excruciatingly loud both the music and the congregation of often drunk people are metres away; all to no avail.
Several others have called out for them to be quiet including a lady with a new born who keeps waking up every few minutes because of screaming pitch vocals from these tenants.
It’s been so bad I’ve looked as often as possible into moving but nothing has eventuated. I’ve never felt so devastated and my health is ruined and work impacted. I’ve had many sick days off (and I’m a 110% effort kind of person) and when I felt that was looking bad, threw away 2 weeks annual leave instead so I could sit at home essentially from bed to bathroom to vomit from migraine and pain.
I’m not litigious, but if I can find the wherewithal, think the tenants, their real estate agent and the landlord should be held liable for destroying several lives that countless evidence proves they have done nothing to address their legal and ethical obligations.
I play my amped classical guitar through an Ampeg bass guitar amp 1×15 cabinet. Yeah a amped classical guitar through a bass amp will raddle windows and make pictures on the walls buzz. I had more pissed neighbers cause they dont like hearing my guitar especially when I hit a bass string. I really dont care if they complane cause there old and dumb. I just sit back and chill with my guitar and crank out some wicked tunes.
Does anyone know if there are any laws, legislation, rules or anything else in regards to noise levels or times in a surburban block in the Northern Territory?
We live on a defence force base in an area where the houses are close together.
We have been put on quarterly inspections because apparently one of the neighbours complained that our kids are too noisy! Now there are 5 of them and they are boys but I would like to tell the real estate to go take a flying leap but I need some backup before I do.
The boys are not allowed out of the house on the weekend before 9am (usually later anyway) and they must come inside from the backyard at 6pm. During the week they wake up about 5.30am (not my idea) and catch a bus at 7.10am or I drive them to school so they aren’t outside prior to 7.10 and then it’s only to walk to the bus stop and I walk with them. In the afternoon they would be in the backyard from 4-6pm at the latest.
Sometimes in the mornings they will just sit down and play or watch tv, othertimes they fight each other (he pulled my hair, he looked at me sideways that sorta thing) but usually they are pretty good and they are inside when this happens. If they are in the backyard playing they are usually playing quite nicely together but sometimes make silly noises (as I have discovered boys do!) it annoys me so they are told off or they may fight and it usually ends in tears and they are all brought inside but if it was the neighbours kids (as it quite often is) I would just suck it up, there are dogs here that bark at all hours of the night, heaven forbid someones kid make a noise but there is no way I would report them, if anything if I felt it was too bad I would approach them and try and sort something out.
Sorry this is so long but after all that does anyone know if there is anything I can do to tell them to get stuffed?
Oh and for what it’s worth I have spoken to the neighbour behind us (whose kids make lots of squealing noises when ever they are out there), the neighbours both sides (screaming kid, barking dog) and the 3 of the 4 across the road and they’ve all said that there is no problem.
Thanks
I used to live in an apartment where I had a neighbor who lived beneath me that was always playing thumping techo late night. I would get out of bed and stomp on the floor, run the vacuum and drop heavy books, but it did nothing to alert my neighbor of the noise he was making. I went as far as to knock on his door at 2:00 AM and explained the situation. He turned down the music that night, but it resumed a few days later. I complained to my landlord, but the landlord really wasn’t any help at all since he didn’t live in the complex. A friend of mine suggested I get even with my neighbor so I purchased a nice used Fender bass guitar and used Peavey bass amp for a few hundred dollars. That night my neighbor was blasting techno again, so I took my bass amp and faced the speaker side downward so that it would be firing into my wood floor and into my neighbors ceiling. I turned the amp’s volume to 8, dialed the bass control to 10 and treble to 0. A few riffs on the lowest string and my apartment was rattling. I did this for several minutes until the techno my neighbor was playing suddenly silenced. I hear a knock at my front door and it was two police officers. I thought, oh sh((( now what. It turns out that there were several complaints from other tenants about loud bass. I explained to the officers that I don’t play the bass guitar and was merely trying to make the neighbor below me realize that his techno music was so freaking loud. The officers looked at me with skepticism and told me that it isn’t wise to challenge other neighbors. They wanted to know why I just didn’t call the police regarding my neighbor’s loud music. I told the officers that I was concerned about retaliation if my neighbor found out I was the one who alerted the police. Anyway, I ended up moving to a different apartment two months later. I haven’t had any negative experiences here. Knock on wood……..
I understand how neighborhood noise annoys everyone – I, too, have been a sufferer for quite a while; which apparently because of our neighbor’s uncontrollable behavior. I scoured the internet for the best solutions and luckily, I found this dependable site: http://urbancontrol.com.au/
They have the best gadget solutions, not only for noises, but also for dog barking and other types of nuisance.
Hope this helps. 🙂
peoples today need to just chill. whats wrong with just leting live and let live. some peoples pay thosands of dollars for a nice sound systems and its there right to enjoy what they work hard for, i got a nice systems in my ride 13000 watt sony head unit pyle amps and kicker woofers sub inclusure with 2×19 21 speakers totel in my 06 charger r/tHEMI that realy drawed lots of attentieon, i get thumbs up peoples saying it sounds badass, noone needs to get all pissy cause peoples like nice tunes and thumpin bass, my chargerHEMI will blow away anyones cars with speed style and sound, 0to60 4.6 secnds qtrmiles 11at 114mph will top out 151mph on hiway280 late night,
“… its there right to enjoy what they work hard for”
Wrong Keddy. I am however going out to spend thousands on a new crossbow. Care to stand in front of a tree and try it out with me? I worked hard for it!
“…my chargerHEMI will blow away anyones cars with speed style and sound”
Says the self-proclaimed hero (who is usually full of BS). Go drive into that tree at 151mph please.
Can’t we simply designate cities for idiots like Keddy? They can all live together and drive each other to madness and eventual extinction?
I’ve read the whole way through these comments and there are some crackers.
I have neighbours (who own their unit) upstairs who, when renovating, removed the insulation from the gap between my ceiling and their floor – this was in my bedroom area. They then relocated their kitchen to above my bedroom (where there is no insulation!). The noise keeps me up to after mid-night and then awake again at 6am. I’ve complained to the my agent who got the strata to issue a by-law breakage notice for the NOISE (not the fact they had also altered common space without permission), the body corporate won’t enforce it (and in fact have a grudge against renters). I don’t want to move and have looked for a new place but can’t find anything that suits my needs. What do you suggest?
“I really dont care if they complane cause there old and dumb”.
Damon, perhaps you should check the definitions (and spellings) of ignorance and arrogance. I’m willing to bet you’re incapable of the task. I dare you to become my “neighber” and see how long you last.
It’s people like you (and surely your parents) who seriously need to stop breeding.
– Smart and not-so-old
The number one rule is to confirm that neighbor you suspect is the one whom is responsible and also to confirm that the “noise” you hear is not related to daily living. I have had a neighbor get angry with me because they could hear the rustling of my sheets when I changed sleeping positions (not realizing that I too could hear them moving around in bed, the only difference being that I had enough decency to not force them to lay motionless). I have been woken up numerous times by neighbors angrily muttering below me whom are apparently hearing something and assuming every time that I am up at these odd hours making this intolerable noise – at one point suggesting to her partner that they call the cops on me (I think this was just a scare tactic, because said it really loud, as if she just wanted me to feel threatened and stop…but all I was doing was sleeping at the time). Each time I wake up and try to figure out what she is hearing – one time I sensed a vibration, but it was the wind blowing against the building.
That accurately describes any prefabricated hotel built in the US in the last 10 years. If I had to live there I’d go mad, and you should not have to make do under these conditions.
We moved to a new row home development about 8 months ago. Now that it’s summer we all have our windows open. One neighbor has very noisy sex – in the middle of the afternoon when the kids are playing outside. Not only is she screaming, but you can hear the slapping and his dirty talk. Apparently they did this last summer, too, and even engaged in sex on their back deck where other neighbors could see them. They apparently don’t give a flying f*&^ that anyone hears or sees them. How the hell do you deal with this?
Maybe take some photos and put it in their mailbox, share with the newspaper 😉
I’m being driven crazy by my neighbour’s wind chimes. while I know this doesn’t seem as serious as loud parties or noisy pets it’s the on-going nature of the noise that I can’t tolerate. I can’t get away from it when I’m in my house.
I live in the Randwick Council area (Sydney, NSW). Any suggestions? And, yes, I’ve tried explaining it it’s a problem….
You are the sort of neighbor that makes life a misery for others. Piano playing at 1am and you want an engraved invitation to stop. You are already doing the wrong thing by placing someone else in the invidious position of having to tell you something you shouldn’t need to be told but you’d like a plan too? Would you like your rear end wiped for you as well. Further you may not make noise within normal hours if you are making a bloody nuisance of yourself doing it. Wake up and then get the facts.
I have neighbours with noisy dogs, but they live in a secure block of apartments and I cannot identify the apartment number. Without that the Council/Police won’t do anything (except as it turns out, send mail care of no one to the block’s street address) – even with photos identifying the apartment. So short of me stalking someone else who lives there it’s taking an age to get official action.
Back in 1980s i used to live in Paddington NSW, below a guy we’ll call G. G used to front a well known band. He got on with a neighbour who lived across the road from me we’ll call M. When they got together, which was often, he’d turn the music up so loud it’d deafen the neighbourhood. This particular day the music was up loud and water was pouring down our walls… My then husband got Jack of all the noise and water, he goes upstairs to G & M going for it on the couch. Hubby picks up G’s stereo throws it in the bath along with all the CDs and storms out… G & M come downstairs to Hubby holding a samurai sword… They apologised and it never happened again… Lol