Is it common decency to inform neighbours who wfh about loud noises?

[Pouche]

Neighbours have literally removed their entire hedge and whilst that is being wood chipped down on their drive there is also a drill being used for the construction of a new fence. The noise is unbelievable. Detached houses with wide-ish plots.

Am I being unreasonable in thinking the nice thing to do would be to inform next door neighbours?

Especially when you know they wfh and have young kids.

I think it's this. If someone was coming to sort my hedges it wouldnt occur to me that it would be THAT loud or to inform the neighbours.

Nope, I wouldn't expect to be told.
I've worked from home for over 20 years and had 2 kids in that time, and just deal with whatever noise is about.

My neighbour did this exact thing if he had told me I could have gone into the office that day no issue

I think also with things like tree work, you often don't know until late the day before, or the morning of, that the works are actually going to happen anyway. Weather plays such a role in whether contractors manage to finish the previous project on time, or finish early and can just fit you in at the end of the day, or rain means yours won't be happening that day etc

It can be even more annoying to have put all the avoidance plans in place to discover that actually the work didn't happen as planned, but will be going ahead tomorrow instead.

I don't think they are being unreasonable, but for WFH you need decent noise cancelling/background noise reduction headphones and mic. Either for calls, or to play background music so you can concentrate.

Of course it can be annoying, but it isn't everyday and sitting in an office with 50 other people talking on their own zoom calls is just as annoying so need the decent headset anyway.

Depends on whether the hedge is a boundary between your houses. I mean if you were going to replace your hedge with a fence, you’d at least go and talk to the neighbours on the other side of that hedge wouldn’t you? Even if you didn’t think there would be any noise?

mind too my experience is that these days all workmen have those bloody powerful radios pumping out noise loud enough to be heard over the equipment, so i expect any work to be loud and disruptive.

I think you're being precious OP. It's give and take ie you're young kids may make loud annoying noise too but the neighbour has to suck it up. Not the neighbours problem that you wfh

I wouldn’t be going out of my way to inform neighbours of noisy work during weekdays. Weekends/evenings might be different. You need noise cancelling headphones!

Power drills and saws are nothing like "a few hours of gardening"!

No, it's not your business to know when they do what kind of work/ maintenance to their property during normal daytime hours.

Yes, it is common decency to inform neighbours if the noisy work is going to continue for more than a couple of hours.

I would always do this and my neighbours would too.

I'm also very concerned that they are taking out a hedge during bird-nesting season, which is illegal.

Hi OP, yes I would tell my neighbours- text the ones who I have their number and put a note and some disposable earplugs through the houses where I don’t know them. It would give people the opportunity to arrange their lives if possible (ie go to the office that day) or at least be forewarned so they know what’s going on.

I think in this case I wouldn't. It's outside and in normal working hours. However if long term it's common manners to tell. However if your house is attached the side that's attached and having banging etc should let you know.. I think you getting mixed answers as it's outside op. Yabu due to location

Maybe they didn't know the work would be so noisy?

I’m quite surprised at a lot of the replies! Yes it’s just nice to say ‘hi we are having x done on Wednesday, it will probably be a bit noisy and the the van will be outside if you need it moved to get off the drive just give us a knock!’ Minimum it lets you know, and as you say you can arrange to go to the office or be out for the day if you wish! Of course they are perfectly entitled to do the work, ops not questioning that- just nice to chat to your neighbours! Everyone here lacks that it seems…

I always inform my neighbours if there will be work done that causes excessive noise to the usual diy work. Because you have no idea what's going on in their life and if they need quiet they can then prepare to go elsewhere. It's just courteous. Like if they wfh they could plan to go to the office that day instead. Or if they were thinking of having a friend over could arrange to go out instead.

‘Common decency’ is over-egging it a bit. As a one-off, during the day, I wouldn’t mention it especially if I thought my neighbours might make a fuss.

Yep - it’s common decency whether they’re home or not. It’s an extension of good manners.

I am in a link-detached home. My neighbour was drilling through brick garage walls recently and the noise was horrific. Had to leave the house due to excessive vibrations and screeching sounds. It was inconvenient but I’d been forewarned so knew at 5pm it would stop.

I’ve always done this with my neighbours and vice versa. We try to live in harmony with each other. It’s useful getting along as no issues with parking, no objections to planning etc…

One or other of my neighbours are always doing something noisy, including tree removal. I let the other half of our semi know, as do they us. Anyone else, no.
I WFH, have doors and windows open most of the time. You have to accept it.
Up until recently very few people WFH, now every man, woman and their dog do, they want their neighbours to revolve around them. Nope, it's a residential area first and foremost, and getting people in to do noisy jobs during the working day is normal.

I get where you are coming from but realistically how many neighbours need to be informed? If my husband was using the chainsaw it would take about an hour to get around all our neighbours to tell them and what about those who are out? Should I print out some leaflets? It's all very subjective but in this instance I wouldn't consider a neighbour to be rude or inconsiderate if they didn't warn me beforehand. Noise at night or long term; different matter entirely!

Anything that’s going to be a week or longer, then yes, but I couldn’t get worked up about a couple of days.

I think I’d get more distracted by my child being in the same house when WFH, even with a childminder.

I would tell my immediate neighbours whether they were wfh or not if it was more than say 20 minutes, and expect the same. It's just good neighbourlyness.

I wfh and due to a recent severe storm there are heavy repairs in our area. No one has informed anyone of work. It’s just a cacophony of sound.

it never occurred to me to be upset about it. At least I’m not dealing with the stress of being in an office. That would be so much worse from an ASD perspective.

Noise canceling headphones can do a lot for building noise.

I let our neighbours know when we had some garden work done recently because I know they work from home in a garden shed thing.

It was a bit awkward though because they recently had loads of noisy work done and didn't inform us. I wasn't being passive aggressive I genuinely wanted to give them a heads up. But she was a bit like... well so it goes there's nothing we can do about it. We didn't tell you when we were having our work done, so...

It's only lunchtime and they are doing work on the garden...