Neighbour reporting us to environmental health for a noise that only she can hear

[Mufferdoodle]

Soooooo arrived home this evening to a nice little letter from the local council, informing us that they’d like to come and investigate the nuisance noise coming from our house on Monday.

I can only assume this noise is the same noise that our next door neighbour has been mentioning at every opportunity for the last 18 months. She claims to be able to hear it at all times of day and night and it sounds like a heartbeat noise. We have never heard this noise but she put a letter trough our door about a year ago saying that one of the trades people who she had called out to investigate said noise had told her that it was 100% coming from our house (even though he also didn’t actually hear the noise).

As neighbours, I think we are pretty decent. We have 2 small children (who are in bed for 7 ish) we go to bed at 9 ish. We don’t play loud music, or make much noise at all really. We did look out for this lady (she’s in her 70’s) I’ve taken her out for the day, bought her a few bits for her house, check on her in cold weather etc etc.

The house is ours - it’s not rented. It’s in a nice quiet cul de sac and we get on with all of the other people who live nearby.

So question is - aibu to tell the council they can’t come poking around my home unless they have a recording of the noise?? I feel really upset and anxious about the whole thing and to be honest I’m 99% sure that neighbour has tinnitus as she has told me a couple of times that she can still hear the noise with ear plugs in.

What would you do??

We had similar with downstairs neighbour moaning about squeaking floorboards and even flushing the loo and boiling a damn kettle

Sounds like the neighbour we had when we lived in a flat, she complained about every little noise, from us on one side, the neighbour the other side and the ones directly above and below her. She even offered to grease the old guy upstairs curtain pole because closing the curtains made too much noise.

It really sounds like pulsatile tinnitus.

Ask her if next time she hears it if she can sit quietly and feel her own pulse, if she realises it is in time with her own heart it might all make sense to her.

I'd welcome them in tbh.

I appreciate that it isn't nice to have people come into your home like this, but at least you know they aren't going to find anything.

I'd also make sure you emphasise that she's batshit making life difficult for you about it too. They may be able to refer to SS/her GP if they think she may need some support.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35344544

Couldn't be anything like this could it?

But does she hear yanny or laurel?

"But does she hear yanny or laurel?"

I heard Yorrel, not sure what that says about me.

Welcome them in, OP! My neighbour on one side has called the police, council re noise from us (non-existent, we are silent!)She has made life hell, screaming, telling us to ‘Go home’ and how were thieves due to our nationality (she isn’t from this country either!) She’s completely bonkers. Apparently we also steal her energy and block her landline. I have no idea if this is even possible. She’s finally been officially told to stop harassing us and was even taken away by some official types with lanyards. We have been nc and in clover since!

Hopefully in your case, having the council round and telling her officially there is no noise will stop her for once and for all.

Personally I would not allow anyone in unless they had right of entry. I doubt if that applies in this case. YANBU.

Interesting... I sometimes hear noises that DH cannot hear. These are not my imaginings - they are things like the hum of a fridge motor or the barely perceptible buzz of electric lights. In shops I hear a lot of white noise from display cabinets, air conditioning and lighting. He cannot hear these either.

It just could possibly be a noise from your house that you are so accustomed to hearing that you don't realize it's there.

Maybe a boiler, dripping tap, motor on fridge or freezer where the sound carries through the wall to her house?

I once had a neighbour who accused me of causing a power cut that affected several streets in our area. It later turned out the cause was a seagull that had stretched out its wings and touched two things in a local supply station that were not meant to be connected. But naturally batty neighbour came knocking on my door because it had to be the renters next door who made her lights go out ......

In addition to what everyone else has said, your neighbour may also be visited p. She might get asked to keep a noise diary - noting what she hears, how loud it is when etc. All of which should lead the council to include there s no noise issue.

So, it’s a heartbeat sound only she can hear and she can hear it through ear plugs...? 🤔

We had a letter complaining about our dog barking 12 months after she died :-( it was so upsetting as even when she was alive she was a quiet little thing and our neighbours both sides said they never heard a peep from her. It was a neighbour in the next road who must have been confused about where the noise was coming from. The council were very helpful and phoned the complainers and explained the upset they had caused with their faults claim.
I would say let the council come out, put to bed once and for all the fact the noise is coming from your house

by chance, yesterday I dealt with the slow and rhythmical dripping of water from an overflow pipe on a loft tank.

It happened at night, because during the day, frequent running of taps used enough water to prevent the level reaching the top of the tank. In this particular case there were three coincident faults - a loose joint on the overflow allowing it to drip; grit in the ballcock preventing it from automatically shutting off tightly, and a service valve which did not close tightly enough to cut off the supply.

Will they set up listening devices in her house or is that not allowed, maybe she will hear the noise when the council are there and they can go and not near anything.

We had a neighbour who complained about noise from our flat. A genuine issue with us not having realised her flat had the opposite layout to ours, so her bedroom was under our living room, and solved the issue with some headphones for DP when he was gaming.

Then she complained and complained about a buzzing noise coming from our flat. We couldn’t find anything. Landlord agreed. She eventually moved out (having lived there 20 years!) still blaming us. Only when we moved a year or so later did the landlord let slip that they’d found a bees nest in the little roof over her bay window just after she moved out

I have dealt with this in my line of work. I've visited properties where (often elderly) people have been very active in making complaints about a noise they can hear. People hear differently dependent on age.

It's the reason that the "mosquito noise is used in areas frequented by youths. Only youths can hear it and be irritated by it. Older people can hear lower pitched noises.

Let them come and listen.

Meant to add - so she could genuinely be hearing something from the direction of your house, without it being something you are doing.

In the same way as you can tell where a sound is coming from, you can tell tinnitus is from the ears

I have Menieres and tinnitus is one of the symptoms. Every now and then, it catches me out by changing its sound from its usual very high-pitched whistle to a deeper, whining noise. The first few times it happened, I couldn't tell if it was coming from outside or not. It became a bit of a standing joke at work. "Lakie's hearing the voices in her head again" etc,

When I first get up in the morning, I have a noise like sifting fine gravel or sand for a while, that's really weird. And I can hear my pulse when I go to bed at night. I find that quite soothing.

OP the chances are, if the council are coming to see you they've already been in her house with recording equipment to see if they can hear any noise from you.

This happened to my parents when they retired and moved to a new home.

Their new neighbour has a long history of making noise complaints, and she started before they even moved in.

She got them to one side and detailed her "ten years of hell" with various neighbours who previously lived in my parents new home and went on and on about how she hoped they would be quiet when they moved in.

After they moved it she kept telling them that she only uses her washing machine between certain hours, she doesn't play music or watch TV, she doesn't close her internal doors or flush her toilets after a certain time of day, and she was expecting them to agree to do the same.

Then she started leaving notes through their door every time they left the house, talking about how she's had a headache but she's risen from her sickbed to write a (long) note because she heard a noise from their home and it's gone right through her. The first time they were only gone for ten minutes so she must have been ready and waiting with the note.

And finally she had reported them to the council, who fitted recording equipment for a short time (not sure if it's a week or three weeks) in her house to see if it would pick anything up.

My parents found out because they came to their door at about 8am to ask if they could come in. They checked that my parents had carpets fitted, which they do, then said the only noise they could hear from all the time spent recording was about five minutes of scraping, which turned out to be my mum vacuuming the kitchen floor before mopping it one day.

Their neighbour had said it was a toddler driving a toy car across a wooden floor for a prolonged amount of time, but they have no wooden floors, no young children, and no toy cars. The noise was recorded on a day when my son wasn't visiting and he's the youngest in the family at 9 years old.

The council were unconcerned by my mother making brief noises because she was cleaning at 11am, and in the end they said that the neighbour makes a habit of this and that they were going to speak to her and say that in light of her many, many complaints over many many years, they were inviting her to apply to be rehoused elsewhere.

So far as we know she hasn't made another complaint.

I'm sure it will be fine when the council come to see you. You're not making the noise, nobody else can hear the noise, what can they do?

We had similar many years ago, when a very unpleasant neighbour alleged that we were running a laundry business from our flat and using the washing machine at unsocial hours. The council knew it was nonsense but had to investigate. A very apologetic bloke from the council turned up at an ungodly hour in the morning when, according to the neighbour, our washing machine was making a racket. He saw that the machine was not running and had not been recently used. He rolled his eyes, went away and we heard no more about it.

OP please let them in. EHO's are under a duty to investigate complaints so even if they thought what she was saying was completely batshit they would have to show that it had been properly investigated and that there was no further action.

you could see this as a positive step. once they have finished their investigations if they conclude there is no stat nuisance then you have this to tell your neighbour each and every time they complain to you. It also might be useful further down the line if this case strays into harassment. quite a lot of them do unfortunately and I would always advise cooperation.

finally, yes, they do have a power of entry to investigate a nuisance. this would be done first informally by asking and if not then they can serve a notice on you requiring that you give them access. don't go down this route because it then is something you would have to declare should you sell your property as it is a local authority legal notice.

Neighbour has semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome. She may be able to hear her eyeballs moving. And her heartbeat. I heard about it from the Jeremy Vine show Radio 2 a little while ago.

Coincidentally, I was out in the kitchen a few minutes ago. Our house is one of those long thin ones, so kitchen then dining room then sitting room then the front of the house then the road. What I could hear was the sound of a car reversing up the road, that high-ish whine going from slow-reverse to high-reverse then slow-reverse. And it repeated. WTF? So I opened the kitchen door to have a listen. Silence. Turned out to be the fridge, because I'd been opening and closing the door because, well, munchies.

Referred sound is as common as referred pain. There's a noise that gets noticed, but it doesn't necessarily emanate from where people think it comes from.

Tinnitus, or indeed "the hum", are examples. The bit of the brain that interprets noise operates on the basis that a noise not only comes from outside but also that it's transmitted via the air. My tinnitus sometimes sounds like a diesel engine at constant speed just around the corner. A friend of mine experienced intermittent sounds in her detached house, but although these were detached houses they were built on a single common concrete base which transmitted some sounds that way.

It can be difficult for some people to accept that bits of them don't work as well as they used to. The environmental people have to go through their standard procedures, but even though that proves you're not the origin of the "noise nuisance", that doesn't mean that your neighbour will simply accept that. But the environmental people will have met this kind of situation before and will provide assurances and suggestions of distraction techniques. (My iPod and audiobooks are perfect distractions.)

I agree that it could be pulsatile tinnitus, there's no getting away from it even with earplugs