To ask my neighbour to not hoover after 8pm

[chewiecat]

New neighbours just moved in upstairs and they love a good hoover. Almost every alternate days. Not a problem usually but they are starting to do this later and later and waking DS up.

It's 9.30 pm now and she's banging and crashing around and DS is crying

Wibu to ask them to refrain from hoovering after 8pm?

Flisspaps :o

Bloody hell steff you put me to shame I haven't hovered this year.

I wouldn’t hoover at this time and would want to ask neighbours not to but probably wouldn’t.

Can’t get me head around hoovering several times a day. I think I’m a massive slob!

If you can hear their hoovering, I'm sure they can hear your kid running around, screaming, crying etc, and that is far worse.

I remember when I lived in a London flat and the new downstairs neighbour subjected us to 6 weeks of noisy building work when then-DP was self employed and trying to work from home. He told us it would be two weeks and failed to respond to a request for an update on the clearly overrunning works.

When he told me he could hear my radio (Radio 4 Today programme, at a very reasonable volume) in the mornings and suggested I shouldn't be listening to the radio in my own flat he got told where to go.

I think it reasonable to hoover at anytime between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. There's no harm in asking if they can do it earlier though as long as you appreciate that they are doing you a favour if they agree.

Could it be revenge hoovering? People seem to have no understanding of the noise that they make, I am aware that not everyone works 9-5 but those who work early or late surely have the basic intelligence to know that not all neighbours work strange hours
Another problem is the apparent popularity of laminate and wooden floors. I have a neighbour with that kind of flooring, and they are often up for work at 5 a.m. We can hear them dragging chairs about. I don't know why they have to shift furniture so early in the morning. I do like a good hoover of my fully carpeted house
I most certainly do not like being busted out of my sleep at 5 a.m. when I have no need or wish to be awake before 8 a.,m.
This is all about behaving decently and having good manners or the lack of them..

I live in a upstairs flat and I actually wait for my downstairs neighbours to get out of bed normally around 10.30ish before I even get the hoover out or the washing machine on and won’t use it after 4.00pm !!! They’ve made me feel I’m a nutter because I hoover and wash every day, it annoys them. It’s effected how I live in my own home Yanbu to ask imo but they are nbu. I believe that in flats you have to expect to hear other people noise. My downstairs neighbours think I can’t hear them believe me you’d be very surprised at how much I can hear.

I hoover every other day because dust causes my eczema to flare up.
But if you told me the situation I’d try to do it earlier ( though sometimes DP gets in from work between 8 and 12 and leaves the house at 8.30. If they’re like him they have little choice.

This thread made BulletSlob me have an insane urge to do the vacuuming earlier.

Personally I'd think up to 10pm ok, speak to the neighbours about your son's routine.

Wow some of these answers are VU! I think it would be fine to ask politely, after all if you don’t ask you don’t get. They have probably not realised at all that it’s disturbing you. If someone asked me I would not be at all offended and I would try to be accommodating, I would hate to upset my neighbours unnecessarily. You can always go for the trade off that earlier hoovering = less baby crying.

I hoover many times a day. Got to love ocd fml

Elusive I want to marry you

I could recline in a corner throwing sweet wrappers around whilst you get on with the ocd stuff. Perfect.

Oh I would ask them. Not in an aggressive way, just nicely and if it is at all possible sort of way. I know when I was young I shared a flat where we made way too much noise. But as soon as a neighbour came and told us it was bothering him we took care not to.

Luckly i have good neighbours who understand. I should get a cleaning job instead of retail

You're not unreasonable to ask them not to, but if that's when they can/want to do it, there's probably not much you can do (but you can feel free to have DC run around loudly at 5am if you've asked for a bit of consideration which has been ignored).
They may not even realise you can hear it though

How noisy can even the noisiest Hoover be in a flat upstairs? I know how irritating unwelcome noise can be but this really sounds over-sensitive.

Op, check your lease or contract for noise rules but normal household noise tolerated up until 10 or 11 pm would be the usual standard in my experience. If there are rules about ensuring a certain proportion of each room is carpeted or otherwise noise insulates, maybe look at getting these enforced. But otherwise, even asking in a nice way might risk irritating your neighbours. If the soundproofing between floors is that poor, you aren't in a good position with a young child to argue noise. Maybe could you have the residents association to ask the landlord or management company to carry out sound proofing works in the block?

Could you run your own Hoover / other source of white noise near your baby's room so that he can get used to it and it would cancel out the additional noise from upstairs?

I am shocked at the previous poster who won't even use the microwave after 8pm. Unless your microwave is diesel-powered, you do have the right to exist as well, you know! There is being considerate and there is being a complete walk-over.

I have 4 kids so hoover several times a day, if a neighbour asked me to stop I would laugh in their face.

I live in a flat and I absolutely wouldn't mind being asked nicely to try and limit the noise.

I don't vac late anyway (aside from when I break something), but unless I really didn't have any other options, I wouldn't go around waking a small baby up. Particularly as then I'd have to put up with the crying.

As a side note, my DS takes after me unfortunately and he wakes up quite easily, more so when he was a baby. DP tried getting him used to loud noises (and failed) until I implemented a very strict 'you wake the baby, you settle the baby' policy. Funnily enough, he stopped after he had to spend the next two hours struggling to get a pissed off baby to settle .

I wonder if the O/P’s neighbour is using a Dyson? My sister has one and it’s the noisiest, heaviest vacuum cleaner I’ve ever seen.

My husband is a bit of a gadget freak and last month came home with an iRbot Roomba vacuum cleaner (just because. I’m very happy with my Shark upright VC).

He’s programmed it via his iPhone to start working on certain days at 11am, but can cancel or amend it via his App.

This morning I had to go for a blood test and went home for a couple of hours, so prepped some food to go into the slow cooker. The damn Roomba was roaming around the kitchen so I had to step out of its way! (If it detects an obstacle it turns around).

I think it’s a good option for people working long hours as it can operate whilst they’re out during the day. It’s not very noisy either. We do have a house rabbit but it is quite nonchalant about it, he just moves to the side if he’s near it (but we have the ‘virtual wall’ barriers so the Roomba avoids parts of the rooms we don’t want it to go).

There are some amusing YouTube videos of cats sitting on the Roombas whilst they are vacuuming lol!

And my DS doesn't cry all night.. just a few times at night

A few times a night is enough to piss off even the kindest of neighbours, OP.

Trust me! I would love him to stop waking up at night too

@CrazyDaze1 it's not so much the noise of the hoover that is loud but the fact that she bangs into the sides of everything! She bangs bangs bangs really hard while hoovering .. maybe it is a vibrator

There are a lot of nice people around, it's a shame others do not comprehend that you have to be considerate when you live in a flat. Hoovering, having the washing machine on etc. before 9am or after 7pm is just rude when you have neighbours

As I'm out of the flat between 5:45am & around 7pm for me to be a considerate neighbour I'd have to live in a hovel do no housework at all during the week & spend my weekends cleaning & doing laundry going by this logic

I have been known to hoover the kids bedrooms/lay away their laundry whilst they are asleep although this is difficult now that the eldest are teens & still awake past 8pm

I am sorry but most people are not really home much before 8pm in the week so it's not really a reasonable request.

That said, I used to do mine at 6am because I have more get up and go in the mornings before work and would do my cleaning then. My neighbour complained which I thought was fair enough so I stopped.

YABU to ask people not to hoover after 8pm. Live and let live cuts both ways

Maybe ask them if they could try to avoid hoovering after 9pm when possible, but you can't dictate

I'm surprised how many people say they hoover several times per day !

Trust me! I would love him to stop waking up at night too

I’m sure you would, but you chose to have your baby knowing they would regularly disturb your sleep; your neighbour didn’t, and that’s the difference.