Garden trampolines. I expect most will think IABU.

[jamdonut]

Totally fed up. Next door have a trampoline which ( it seems) is in constant use ( or rather, whenever I am at home it is).

I have a nice , garden . Ex Local authority, so on an estate. I'd like to sit and relax in it, but all you can hear is the sound of squeaky springs, usually accompanied by kids screaming, or, teenagers who bounce so high you can see them over our fence. (Most of these kids do not live at the house, it seems the whole neighbourhood visits to use their garden [ hmm] )
I'm all for kids having fun, but in small gardens, is it fair to subject your neighbours to the accompanied noise/ inconvenience caused?

If you've got the sort of garden that is big enough to not overlook anyone else, all well and good, but I feel like I'm going to have nervous breakdown if I have to put up with this noise or the sight of shirtless teens above my fence any longer. It's like torture.

My neighbours are not the kind of people you can just " have a word with", either.( We lived here 8 years with no problems, before they were moved in 5 years ago)

I just wondered what the consensus of opinion is - am I actually unreasonable or have I turned into a miserable ' old' person? ( My own kids are 17, 20 and 24...but I would never have allowed them to annoy the neighbours like this).

Maybe get some noise cancelling headphones? Or building site ear defenders.

You have my sympathy OP.

YANBU. I have a family at the end of my garden with a trampoline & it's a hideously annoying noise. They're also the same family who seem unable to be outside (parents included) without shouting at the tops of their voices. In the nice weather when the kids are at school the mother goes outside with the radio on full blast so I can not only identify the song but the words too. I hate them with a passion. There are no other families around here that make a noise like them (and there will be other children) - they're obviously just thoughtlessly noisy.

Expatinscotland

Haahaa! You'd have to prove they were on it pretty constantly for that to be so

No you wouldn't. This is just wrong. It's about whether it is a nuisance so someone having to deal regularly with people bouncing over the height of their fence, looking into the garden every summer evening or even a few days a week would do.

Sometimes just the time of day a neighbour does something can be a nuisance in law.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3581123/From-vacuuming-late-day-trampolining-high-garden-13-everyday-ways-accidental-law-breaker.html

You have to prove it is the issue and you do this and you will need to disclose your neighbour dispute when you go to sell the house, for an item that gets used about a month out of the year.

That's a different point. You were going "hahaha" that's not a nuisance unless they are on it all the time which is wrong.

The line between acceptable noises resulting from closing living and nuisance noise is very thin and moves for each person.

Kids playing in their own equipment is probably going to be well within any kind of legal limit so OP needs to look at things like noise and visual reduction via a higher or an acoustic fence.

Is there times of day that they dont use trampoline? If its being used for 12+ hours a day it will break soon and then that will solve the problem.

YANBU I've
Lived with this - really painful. Actually one of the reasons for moving.
Now live next to people each side in their sixties and I won't buy my toddler one as I will Also save My Neighbours the pain.

Also really ugly things and ruin a nice garden

In terms of how to make things better, I think you need to see it as your issue rather than the neighbour's.
It is after all you who gets disproportionately irritated by the noise. So you need to either block it out or learn to see (hear) it in a positive light. It's great that you live in an area that kids are able to have fun in an outdoor space and that they have friends to play with etc. As mentioned earlier, my neighbours have quad bikes. When I first heard them when I moved in I made a conscious decision not to let them annoy me but to remember that it is keeping the kids driving them happy.
I know it's easier said than done to change your mindset.
As a teen I used to get so so annoyed with birds singing early in the morning, it used to set me up for a grumpy day. I knew it was stupid and I could make them stop but their constant twittering got in my head and drove me mad! Now I hear the birds in the morning and appreciate how lovely it is to live in a place with thriving wildlife- once it stops irritating you, you will no longer get be fixated on it.

I'm sure our neighbours don't like the trampoline much but I do make sure they don't go on too early (before 10) and not after 8. It is a great tool in getting them off screens for a bit.

You can only control your own garden so just do what you have to with fencing, trellises, planting etc.
We have the dreaded leilandii as hedges. So long as you keep on top of the height by trimming they're good and thick and absorb sound. An enclosed seating area will help too. All things that will increase your privacy anyway (the kids will outgrow the trampoline and be inside on social media soon enough).

Play some classical music quite loudly. They do this in my local McDonald's when they want the teenagers to leave....works a treat

A neighbour here has a huge trampoline. It is in the corner of her garden which adjoins 2 houses. She could have put it in the other corner where it would have been next to only one house. The fence is about the height of the jumping rubber. No privacy for 2 neighbours!
It is another sign of the selfish people who seem to be everywhere these days. When I was young and when my children were young we went to the pool where they also had trampolenes. Her children are teenagers. She wont discuss a change of fence either.

I think if you don't want to be bothered by children's toys, noise etc then you don't buy a house on a LA estate.

OP It won't be every day in the summer holiday if you're in UK, we do get the occasional drop of rain!

We moved cos of kids 'playing.' House next door but two was a magnet for older kids / teens from all over the village. Kids hanging around, drinking, smoking, playing, rolling around in the bushes, noisy, sat on our doorstep, leaving litter and rubbish everywhere, being rude & intimidating to my kids when they were playing in our garden by poking their heads over the quite high fence ( which got pulled down multiple times ). As the family was established in the village, with loads of relations close by, for generations the solution was for us to move, the likelihood of them moving was zero. I did not realise how stressful and worrying I found the whole situation, which I had been treating as a joke publicly, until I moved and it was like my mood lightened over night. My DS's anxiety has reduced too, almost to normal levels now. The sheer bliss of being able to go outside without getting interrogated by several overfamiliar kids can not be exaggerated. I really sympathise OP, we decided not to confront the neighbours but to move. Other people in the close have gone down the route of reporting every thing to the police, while they are right to do so, the ill feeling and arguments it causes are in my view best avoided - ok I'm a coward!

YABU I would much rather my dc be outside on the trampoline than indoors watching screens. The teenagers that live next door were never outside playing when younger, they are both overweight. Children need at least one hour of exercise a day... and most aren't getting anywhere near that nowadays.

There are only 6 houses where we live and up until recently we were the only ones with primary aged dc. Although we all have big gardens I'm sure the neighbours probably don't like my dc having fun on the trampoline either, then neither do I like one neighbours dogs barking, or music blaring, or fires lighting etc. etc.

Noise is what happens when you have neighbours, you just have to accept this and not let it take over your life.

YANBU. A reasonable, civilised neighbour would restrict the times it's in use.

The sound wouldn't bother me, but the bounce/peek over the fence would.

Can you sit/lounge faced away from them and perhaps buy a large garden/sun umbrella on a stand and put it behind you, tilted at an angle? Less permanent than a planted screen as you could close the umbrella when not needed.

DH and I live out in the country but we'd like to downsize soon which means moving to town. These are the kinds of things that keep us staying where we are despite the problems involved in having an old farmhouse and acreage.

Are trampolines any worse than other equipment? We have a swing which makes a noise and a climbing frame which puts children up high able to see into people's gardens. If they play with a football it can go over the fence and they disturb neighbours by asking for it back. There isn't. Much they can so without disturbing the neighbours one way or another.

However I do think parents need to be strict on what hours they are allowed out - not early in the morning or late evening.

The washing line and sheets is a good idea if line of sight is the issue.

At train stations in Australia they sometimes play classical music because apparently teenagers can't stand it and don't loiter then.
Are you a Bach or a Liszt fan, by any chance?

I'm glad you're not my neighbour. My son adores his trampoline and is on his most days for a few hours intermittently. My retired neighbour popped her head over the fence and told me that she knows summer's here when she hears the kids playing and she loves watching them so happy.

You need to get a grip.

Haha, worth a try nellipotter .

Thanks for all the replies. Some good suggestions about hiding line of sight. To those who agree with me and share my pain, thank you for the support. To those who think I need to get over it - I swear I'm trying to, but it is seriously annoying. Every day I tell myself to not let it bother me, every day I end up feeling rattled.
Ah well.
Life's too short, and all that.

Moany perhaps your son is one of those who plays nicely.
My elderly neighbour used to say that about my children, that she'd never met such well behaved ones. Now she says She feels sorry for me living right next to "that racket".

Kids having fun? What a shocker 😮
Yabvu. They're entitled to use their garden just like anyone else.