No Swimming Pool After 8pm - AIBU?

[Varala]

We had a swimming pool built (outdoor) last spring which has been great fun for DD and DH (I’m not much of a swimmer), especially during lockdown.

We do have a large garden, but it is bordered by three other nearby houses. Two just by the garden, but one of the houses is up against one of the far walls of the garden, by the pool.

Earlier today, a note was found shoved under DH’s windscreen wiper (not sure what’s wrong with the letter box, but hey ho). It is signed “your neighbours” and requests that we not use the pool after 8pm as they are being disturbed by shouting and splashing.

Very rarely is the pool in use that late in the evening anyway, but on the rare occasion it is, there is certainly not any shouting (though a bit of splashing can’t be helped). Are the neighbours just jealous that we have a pool? I’m fuming and ready to go round each of the neighbours individually to discuss, but DH has told me to drop it and they’ll let it go. AIBU to think it’s nobody else’s business what we do with our pool?

@Justjoshin22

I’d be really interested to know what people from countries that have pools as standard think. My feeling is that it’s sour grapes and 1. An anonymous note is cowardly and 2. 8pm is unreasonable. 9pm I could understand. Honestly, I’d go and speak to them. People are rarely as bolshy in real life and you can work it from there.

I can tell you. Screaming kids in a pool at 10pm on Queensland's Sunshine Coast is as effing annoying as those in Surrey.

maybe you drove them up the wall when it was being built

Ignore it, any reasonable noice is okay to 11pm

@SantaClaritaDiet

I don't allow my kids to make any noise in the garden after 7pm. They are up until much later, but my neighbours have a right to peace and quiet - as we do. It seems that everybody is the same, and people can enjoy their garden without being disturbed

I found it hard to believe neighbours could be disturbed by the noise of someone swimming quietly, you probably make more noise just watering the plants.

Their business is the disturbance created, and I find the accusation of "jealousy" a bit childish.

It's bliss on warm summer evenings to be able to sit in the garden without being disturbed by the neighbours.

You are like me. I keep our noise down of a summer's evening because I believe all of my adjoining neighbours deserve to be afforded that respect; as they afford it to me.

It really isn't that hard to be an adult about this stuff, is it?

[quote Yankathebear]@uniglowooljumper I completely agree about the way that the note was given but wouldn’t you want to know who you had upset and how you had upset them rather than getting cross and deciding that they are jealous?[/quote]
No. I don't spend my time speculating about others' emotions.

I'm the same as Miljea and SantaClaritaDiet. I don't let my dc be noisy in the garden in the evening, simply I just want to chill out myself too. They can have fun in the day time, don't need to disturb others into the evening.Our road has lots of kids, but it's always quiet past 7. I'm glad we live in the considerate neighbourhood.

What the fuck is wrong with people
I have the noise of neighbours kids in their pool all day
Doesn’t bother me in the slightest and we have smaller gardens

Miserable bastards

Makes me think of the spoilsport people living in houses near a local skatepark.
They tried to get it shut down but as a compromise the council fenced it off and now someone locks it every night at 6pm. I have always thought 6pm was way too early and I also think your 8pm is too early.

Spoil sport people.
But just some of us don't mind kids shouting during the day all day, but not when we want to chill out in the evening. Some people have different preferences.

Interestingly, what is actually missing is a diagram!

How differently we'd react if 'The house' was 200m away from the pool, but the pool was 5m away from the neighbours house.

How differently we'd react, if 'the neighbours' could YouTube a video of 'splash, scream, scramble, splash, scream, scramble' versus the assumption of quiet enjoyment, breaststroking silently up and down the pool.

I lived in pool-ville on The Sunshine Coast, Australia. We'd have mums' group get-togethers often in each other's gardens, by the pool, kids from 18m-7 years. Always, there was at least one screamer. Always. But this would be 9.30am -12 noon.

Neighbours never complained, as it was over by noon.

We'd then maybe get in our pool mid evening. Our DC felt much less of a need to scream with mum and dad in with them, as an aside!

Evening/night parties, on the estate? I guess seeing as so may of us had pools, no one needed to tout their pool-availability as a 'draw' to the party. So no evening screaming.

I imagine that the OP's child is behaving, into the evening, in the UK, like ours did before noon. In Australia.

Still waiting to find out how far from the ops house the pool is. Maybe she is currently splashing in it and the WiFi doesn't reach that far for her to update us

I think what the note means is that they are being disturbed throughout the day by splashing and shouting, so are you happy to stop using the pool from 8pm onwards. Not that they splashing and shouting is after 8pm.

@Rayne30

Like a PP said, noise laws don’t mean much when it is a nuisance (eg music playing loud all day disturbing people isn’t ok regardless of the time, I know my council will take action)

8pm is slightly early, but what circumstances are your neighbours in? Is someone ill ? Do they have young children? There’s no harm in trying to find away for everyone to feel happy.

I won’t lie I grit my teeth when I’m putting my child to bed at night after 9 and the neighbours kids are up screaming in the garden and rattling a basketball into a net. It’s just unnecessary. It’s worse so as my child has hyper sensitive hearing. Thankfully the basketballs novelty wore thin fast We had issues with music. We spoke to them, they were mortified and apologetic.

I would say get to know your neighbours, speak to them if possible.

Ok, Your neighbours might just be knobs. They might however have a reason, and maybe there’s a compromise.

The noise laws are simply a helpful guideline for what society has generally deemed acceptable vs. unacceptable. Clearly a house party at 1am is different to kids playing at 8pm. The latter is largely expected and accepted. I expect most people would bring their kids in long before 11pm anyway, out of general respect. As early as 8pm though, probably not.

I'd also agree that there is obviously a bit more nuance than that, and there could be exceptional circumstances, etc. and good neighbours should be willing to talk about this stuff and compromise. But it's rather hard to do that when you get an anonymous note, isn't it!

.

Hmm moving to 'the country' would not help noise wise, from my experience anyway. My grandmother moved to the middle of nowhere, as she was sick of having issues (not noise related really but just..problems) with the neighbours so wated 'space. Space she got, seemingly miles in each direction nothing but fields and trees. Bliss she thought.

Until she discovered that instead of hearing Mary shouting at Bill to get the fuck up out of bed at 8am every morning, some random cockrel started screeching at 5am instead, and many many very strange loudish noises coming from all directions until maybe about 9am when they seemed to chill out again, until late night, when weird squeely noises would start followed by grunts and such

Suddenly, neighbours were not so bad and 'fuck the country'.

It was quite bad like, but to listen to her talking about it it was as if noahs ark landed on her doorstep each morning or something, sure it wasn't THAT bad

I think 9 or 10 is fine as long as you're not being really loud. Just ignore them.

Use the pool whenever you want but keep the noise down. They are obviously bothered by the noise, and unless they are in the habit of making unreasonable demands I'd go with the policy remaining on good terms.

It sounds to me like they could be bad-tempered and intolerant - our neighbours are like that and complain of the noise if my daughter has so much as a friend round (not often at all obviously because of lockdown etc).

They've made it clear that they consider their garden to be a sanctuary and they expect it to be quiet...yet they live in a built up neighbourhood of families and we back onto a junior school! Doesn't stop them picking on us.

As a result, when my daughter has the occasional friend over now I no longer tell them to keep it down. You can't win with unreasonable people and they're definitely joy-suckers. Possibly your neighbours may be the same!

Building a pool 5m from someone else's house wasn't exactly considerate. Considering it's so close I would try to knock it on the head by 8.

Put a sign in your yard "unless you pay our counsel taxes, you have no say in when we use our pool"

Do you ever think about the neighbours might be affected OP?
Are they very close to the pool?
Is there a continuous noise from the pool pump/machinery - that would be really upsetting if it was right by their garden and they could not sit in their sanctuary without a continuous hum. I know it would drive me mad.
During this time of lockdown everyone has really valued their time in the garden and if they aren't getting any peace I would feel really sorry for the neighbours.

Tony Blair's government had stuff to say about this, regarding 'anti-social neighbours'.

Remember the ASBO?

A recognition about how miserable and soul-destroying it is to life next door to utter, idiotic, selfish bastards.

Don't be those people, OP.

Sound is amplified above a body of water. Your pool is only 5m from their house @Varala.

We have a pool and our neighbours have pools but they are all at the end of the garden, which are terraced as we are on a cliff, so they are 30-50m away and about 3 stories down. The noise really carries. It's a bit like having a barbecue. It's fine if your neighbours only do it once in a while but if it is every night that the weather the is good, it can wear you down if you can't ever enjoy your garden in peace or have your windows open on warm nights.

I wouldn't regularly use our pool after 8pm other than for silent lengths or a one off special occasion, when we would probably invite the neighbours or at least tell them, if we were having a party. Luckily, we have great neighbours who we get on with, and kids (now adults) of a similar age so there was no conflict in wanting quiet after a certain time.

God Mumsnet is funny. If you'd got a hot tub people would be saying of course you need to be out of it by 8pm blah blah. I don't think they're jealous. I imagine they're finding the splashing and shrieking of kids playing in a pool annoying. I would make sure they're not doing it past 9pm and leave it at that. If they want to speak to you about it they'll have to actually come speak to you!

I think it’s unreasonable to not use your pool after 8pm because it gets dark so late in England summer!

BUT I think YABU if you kids are shouting & shrieking in the pool - that would be annoying. You could ask the kids to keep it down after 8pm. It wouldn’t kill them to keep quiet if they want to enjoy the pool after 8pm.

I can see both sides, it’s usually not a good idea to make wars with neighbours so some compromise might not be the worst idea.

Do you ever think about the neighbours might be affected OP

Of course she doesn't. A PP suggested OP was a nuisance and was called rude for it.
That's the trouble with society today, people like the OP and some of the PP are selfish and have a 'do what I like mentality'. No consideration for the neighbours at all, who now have to put up with the usage and running sounds of a swimming pool that's been built less than 5m from their home.