To think too many neighbours are utterly selfish?

[everyleafy]

I moved house last year in the hope of finding some peace. My old neighbour had a surround sound system in a small semi and it used to drive me mental listening to the bass on it. Then there was the constant shouting at his family.

Moved to a new semi (would dearly love a detached but I can't afford it) and have a different set of problems. There's another shouty man, a barking dog and they play loud music every weekend. They know the walls are thin, but obviously don't care and just want to do what they want.

On my walks I've noticed a fair few people blaring their music from their houses and I always feel so sorry for their neighbours.

I wonder what things were like in the past, did people used to blare out their wirelesses? I doubt it, I think people are getting more and more selfish.

My neighbours are lovely.
When we lived in the EU when we were first married, we lived next door to a couple of dickheads who owned a bar. (Tourist area by the Med). They were out from early afternoon until about 4am, they would invariably have a really loud shouty row and then have very loud make up sex. Their bedroom was right by ours 😳. If this wasn't bad enough, they left their poor dog alone all that time, never walked it and only let it out for a very brief toilet break a couple of times a day 😭.

It's just they take over the whole space every fri/sat night. I'm watching TV at a normal volume (doesn't carry far when you leave the room volume) and simultaneously listening to Duran Duran It's gone on til midnight the past few weekends and I've just sat there on my own feeling incredibly depressed. Can't move again till I've saved enough, so oh well only another 5-6 years to put up with it
They know the walls are thin because when I moved in they said oh you might hear us. I don't see any point complaining because it's not like they don't realise, they just don't care.

I don't expect silence, I wouldn't even mind just hearing it in the background. Same with garden music really. There's a house a few doors down with a doof doof doof hifi that comes on every sunny day.

I checked out the street and drove past at different times of day but never heard anything then. You can't hang around round the clock.

I had it when I was renting too, my ex had a go at them and they just said "it's our house, we work all week so we can do what we like!"

Sound proofing? We put polystyrene boards under wickes sound board and got a local plasterer to plaster it... to block our noise leaking into neighbours.. as before that, if a child cried they d be banging on wall.. but I’m sorry the noise sensitive ones moved now and I don’t want to ask newbies if they can hear us...

@dotdashdashdash

I kind of get what you're saying, but on the other hand, people also have to live their life.

We're semidetached but our non-detached neighbour has dogs and we can still hear them (yes, from their house to ours). I dislike music in gardens, whether ours or other peoples, I prefer to listen to the birds and over head planes etc, but everyone is different and whilst their music reduces my enjoyment, the lack of it reduces theirs. If you can't talk in a normal volume because of neighbour music that's a different thing, as I playing it late at night or early in the morning. Anything that falls outside of "antisocial noise" though, is just personal preference.

I'm a quiet person and I prefer silence to music or background noise, but I appreciate everyone is different.

Live their life, being antisocial and rude?

@BobbinThreadbare123

I feel you, OP. My neighbours on one side are absolute dicks. Constant noise which often feels like it's coming from inside my house. We're detached too - the whole road is! Barbecue smoke from spring to the onset of winter, screeching kids, a noisy dog, they won't secure any items when it's going to be windy so we have to listen to all their garden crap clatter about. They have completely ignored all of the lockdown rules too. I wasn't keen on them before but now I think they're vile.

Bet they’re not keen on you either...

Live in a newish estate, lots of tiny gardens backing on to each other. Neighbour directly at the back of me (so there’s probably ten gardens within about 20 metres of that point) likes dirgey male singer songwriter music. The sort of thing which is nice for a song or two, but not as background noise all day in their garden in the summer - even when they go inside.

So bloody selfish.

My neighbours are extremely quiet and both deaf as a post. Perfect not that we do anything antisocial, but it is nice to know our normal life with a toddler and a baby on the way won’t be disturbing them!

@Cactus1982 how do you figure that? They don't hear me, that's for sure.

We are in our late 20s now, we never have music on loud, BBQs outdoors we have music until about 9pm but it's kept right down, our dog doesn't bark (would do it he for as left out at night) yet we were grounded by the elderly man who lived next door.

When we moved in he said my husband couldn't park his van in our parking spaces because it's sign written. He made a complaint regarding my tumble dryer being on in the day, when that failed, he reported me for having a laundry business and not declaring it as he'd seen my friend bring a basket of washing round as hers was broken and I washed her work clothes and the kids uniforms for her. I had an investigation which was obviously written off when they found I had a normal size washer and dryer and no evidence of any incomings other than my wage. We did all we could for him, in the snow I went round and delivered groceries, picked up his prescription for him etc.

I was in bed one day and was recovering from surgery after a miscarriage when my husband called me to say he'd called him (my DH gave him his number when we moved in) to say he'd seen men leaving the house in taxis and told the estate I was a prostitute. Thankfully, they were all well aware of him and he was caught looking around my neighbours garden when they were out on CCTV. It was the last straw for me so I got myself out of bed, in my pjs, bleeding and banged on his door and told him if he ever calls my husband or reports me for anything ever again I will call the police and report harassment.

He died 6 months later, his nephew apologised profusely to me when we saw him in the garden and said there was nothing wrong with him (no dementia etc he'd always been like it).

It was hell living next to him and I know it sounds awful but I feel like a weight has been lifted from me since he's been gone.

My new neighbours are lovely and love our dog and cat etc, always chatty. It makes such a difference to your emotional well-being when you have nice and considerate neighbours.

It's the ones with 4 cars who piss me off. Or the ones who think they own the road, marking territory with their cones. Music doesn't bother me so much.

@everyleafy

Maybe consider sound proofing?

We did when we had a semi. Cost £500, but worth every penny. Couldn't hear a THING through the walls. (Was a 1960s semi.)

[quote BobbinThreadbare123]@Cactus1982 how do you figure that? They don't hear me, that's for sure.[/quote]
Because none of the stuff you’ve described is particularly anti social. Barbecues are perfectly legal, dogs sometimes bark and even with the best will in the world sometimes strong winds blow down garden furniture and bins etc. As for the comments about screeching kids? I don’t know if you are aware but children play out. If this stuff botheres you so much then estate living clearly isn’t for you and a detached house on the side of a mountain might be more up your street?

Quite honestly you sound very entitled.

@RincewindsHat

I have one neighbour who likes to share their music with the entire road every. single. sunny. day. They clearly know it's loud (they're several houses away from me and I can sometimes hear it with my windows closed) but don't give a crap. They could enjoy it just the same with the volume a little lower, but never do. Luckily I quite like their taste in rubbish pop music, but if they were heavy metal fans I'd have knocked on their door by now and asked them to turn it down. I don't understand why they think it's OK to subject everyone else to their music, I would never do it, but there we are.

I have the opposite problem. I'm the heavy metal fan and every sunny day is ruined by extremely loud neighbour music. I've never, ever played my music outside, but I think I will this summer. Just a little bit. At a reasonable volume.

This makes me so worried about moving! I have quiet neighbours, I'm probably the louder one as I have kids but generally quiet, wouldn't dream of blaring music out ect, I'm so scared of buying a house whose neighbours blast music out or has parties. it would be my absolutely worst nightmare.

'Hell is other people.'

People do not care. It is pointless talking to them because they know they are being noisy but they think they can do as they like. Noisy people tend to hate others noise though.

I have lived in so many cities often very close to the centre and I have never experienced anything like my old neighbourhood. If you live close to people you all have to be considerate.

I'm finding it very hard to recover from my old neighbourhood and I hope they now have a very loud neighbour in my house!

@Cactus1982 thanks for informing me about other humans. That is quite a reach! I don't live on an estate for a start. You sound like you're projecting...

I like reading books. I would fully expect that if every time I read a book someone next door could hear that dialogue in their head then it would piss them off. It wouldn’t be tolerated. Especially if I could read my book using headphones that meant no one else could hear it but I was just choosing not to.

I’ve just moved house. From a neighbour who had two yapping dogs and whose shitty husband listened to talk sport for HOURS every day alone in the garden. That’s okay because they loved their dogs and dogs are a ‘part of life’. NO. I fucking hated their dog noise. Why should I have to hear their dogs while I am having my breakfast, lunch, gardening, on the phone or anything else. And as for the radio - he could have worn headphone and heard exactly what he wanted to hear except the rest of the neighbourhood wouldn’t have had to.

I didn’t infiltrate other people’s lives so why should they infiltrate mine. Unavoidable noise is, well, unavoidable. But I’d say 90% of the stress from this stuff is totally avoidable incessant selfish shit. Music can be played through headphones (that’s the one that pisses me off the most) and dogs need to be moderated.

And don’t please anyone suggest people who are ‘intolerant’ need to live in a field/up a hill etc. Do you think we are suffering like martyrs who wouldn’t do that if it was an option? It’s unaffordable for the majority.

People just need to be more considerate.

People are awful. My house is detached and I still hear the music from my neighbours garage on the opposite side of my house.

The people over the fence play shit music all summer.

I can't wait to move somewhere secluded.

Mn is always full of threads with dreadful noisy neighbours.

Never been my experience. Flats in London - never any issues with music or dogs or noise etc. Downstairs flat had a couple of parties - gave us warning in advance, invited us, weren't terribly loud anyway and reduced volumes after 10.30pm, was honestly fine. Moved to a semi and never really noticed the neighbours 3 kids. 1 played a musical instrument but I only realised when I was off ill and briefly heard practise at a low volume at about 4pm. Now live in a very overlooked detached house. Neighbours are largely quiet in gardens. People barbecue but when they do usually everyone is, us included, and it's no cause for complaint.

Agree, just moved house because of shitty neighbours. It was a detached house on a corner plot on the end but neighbour over back ruined it with crappy music, hot tubs and barking dogs. Parties that also went on till 4/5am. I hated the sight and sound of him in the end. He was a big selfish pig and I loved that house.

My neighbour wrote to me complaining about my surround sound system and my grandfather clock. I don't have either of these things, and we only watch TV for an hour or so early evening and it's really not loud. The walls of a 200 year old cottage just aren't that thick.

In the past every home had a piano so I'm pretty sure that meant plenty of noise traveling through walls

Really? How far in the past was that?

I moved in November and my neighbours attached to me are best described as emotional. How do people noise insulate? We share joists too so I'm thinking do I need to insulate the doors too?

I've never had noisy neighbours in my life (apart from one couple who only came down at weekends and you could hear the man's snoring whilst you tried to sleep- but that never made him inconsiderate, just unfortunate.) However, I now live on a small council estate and the people above me have blessed me with music so loud that I could barely concentrate reading through these posts. They KNOW you can hear through the walls because she has apologised many times for things like hoovering or her kids screeching (which I don't mind- that's part of life ) , but it's when her partner is home and plays the same dreary masculine romantic love songs and rap music every day so loud that I can hear it in every single room as though it's playing in my own house and it drowns out my own music or stops me from trying to nap some days with a baby. I can't even be bothered to get into mentioning it to them because of course they know they just don't care enough because any sane human being would be like hmmm this is a bit loud, let's not annoy the neighbours. I'm just going to soundproof the ceiling when I can afford it though as I like my neighbourhood and I do like them overall and don't really want the agro of moving