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'm working from home today. At 8am there was a knock on the door. Man from utility company asking if we could move car as the were needing to dig. 3 vans turned up and they have been digging etc off and on since. Neighbours 2 down having roof replaced loads of noise from drills hammering etc. Man next door has so far strimmed, cut the grass and is now powerwashing the path. At least 2 other lots of noisy work going on including a shredder disposing of a tree and various banging, sawing and drilling noise.
That's just life in a residential street in the summer months when people are trying to get outside work completed.

This.

Yabvvvu

Unfortunately not the norm. During Covid, as soon as you could have builders working my neighbour across the street embarked on practically a rebuild of his whole bloody house and garden. There was loud building noise everyday for MONTHS and I was trying to get used to working from home in a house with single glazed windows 😬
As soon as that finished some other neighbour started 😂

You asked would it be a nice thing to do, would it be considerate.

You're not unreasonable for thinking that no.

I think a lot of people have failed to answer the question to be honest. They're reasonable for doing work, but it would have been nice of them to let you know.

Snort!

Of course but OP has a non issue. If ear phones don't work with what sounds like normal neighbour household sounds in the day, OP can just go into the office. It's hedge maintenance not the building of the hanging gardens of Babylon. Making a mountain out of a molehill.

The WFH is irrelevant

Some mumsnetters are so rude / harsh.

But I do think you are being unreasonable. I get it, I’ve had neighbours have work done during day time that’s woken up my son but I have never and would never say anything as they aren’t breaking the law in any way. Work needs to be done, can’t be done crack of down or at night time so day time it is.

I wouldn’t have thought about telling neighbours tbh.

Idk if some are wfh or not or what days in any case.

What would you have done with your napping child?

Apparently there's a childminder!

Didn't know 'childminders' e we irked in other peoples homes though so 🤷‍♀️ who knows

Such bizarre and snarky responses to the OP@Pouche . Totally reasonable to hope that a neighbour would give you a heads up for that volume of noise- 100%. It’s absolutely no skin of their nose to do so, so no idea why PP’s are finding that to be so unreasonably high maintenance. I imagine they’d be fuming if it happened to them.

I have really difficult neighbours and if I gave them notice of noisy work they would think they had the right to veto it outright or to negotiate the dates with me. So I don’t. They have never ever given me notice of when they are doing work despite the fact they always complain when we do. Sometimes they even complain when it’s not even us doing the noisy work and on one memorable occasion they complained when we had a gardener weeding our front garden (using no mechanical equipment of any kind) because it was after 6pm and they could see him!

I’m therefore firmly in the no notice it’s it’s short term and within normal daytime hours camp

So the childminder is in your house but can’t take the child out?

Childminder/nanny whatever you want to call her does not have a car. She uses public transport for kids. She walks a lot as we are close to the shops

'whatever you want to call her' there's a huge difference. A CM would have your child in their own home so it would be a complete non-issue.

If it was daytime/working week work. , I wouldn’t have bothered to inform the neighbours. Noise is part of life. 🤷‍♀️

My DC would have happily napped whilst being taken out in the pram/buggie round the shops.

So CM could have took child on public transport to your parents?

I wouldn't consider one day's work excessive noise. The drilling could equally happen by council works etc. And if it was just to install fence posts it shouldn't have been continuous

I don't think for one day's work they need to let you know unless it impinges on your access to your drive or garden

Exactly.
I've wfh since long before covid.
You accept there is some external noise.
for me - without dc in the house - I take the noisier external noises as it is more than balanced by the fact my house is completely quiet inside, unlike most offices.
However, I've been at work many a time when there have been loud noise from outside too - maintenance of buildings and roads isn't confined to houses at all.

Polite to inform neighbours about that kind of work generally. Not anything to do with if you work from home or not.

Of course people that are having noisy work done or are doing it themselves should let their neighbours know about it beforehand to give them a chance to make adjustments.

It really feels like English people hate their neighbours when I read threads like this full of people that wouldn’t inform their neighbours about noisy work.

And then there’s all the people who have put up with noise without complaint telling you to do the same. That’s an expression of hopelessness and learned helplessness. People that have been broken by the insults heaped upon them by their own neighbours, who can’t see a way out, refusing to accept that there’s another option. Crabs pulling each other back in to the pot.

Ignore them, OP.

Not only are you correct that your neighbours should inform you when they are going to do noisy work, but if they don’t, it’s your right and responsibility to go and have a chat with them about it so that they don’t make the same mistake again.

So you're working from home whilst looking after your child who is young enough to still take naps?!

Undercut your argument a bit there....

No. There's a nanny.

Completely agree with this. It's clear from many of the posts in here that the sense of belonging to a community has gone. I blame social media!