neighbours have installed the ACTUAL SUN on the side of their house?

[tigerlover1]

So the neighbours are having their house renovated, all very normal, lots of banging and sawing etc. Fine, I can cope. But today the builders installed what I can only describe as a star-level security light.

Previously they had a normal little motion sensor light — you know, the standard “pop out to the bins without tripping over the cat” level of brightness. NOW? Now it’s like they’ve strapped a NASA-grade solar flare to the wall. I swear my bedroom is lit up like I’m orbiting the sun closer than Mercury. If I open the curtains I half expect David Attenborough to narrate the birth of a new planet.

And the sensor?? Oh. My. God. It’s going off ALL night. Breeze? On. Moth flapping its wings three streets away? On. Me blinking too loudly? On.
I’m lying in bed feeling like I’m sleeping on the set of Interstellar.
WIBU to ring the builders tomorrow and politely ask if they can angle it down a bit or maybe ?

OP, never mind David Attenborough. I would pay for you to narrate my day to day life 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Sorry about your retinas, but thanks for the laugh 😎

Of course you can ask them to angle it down, I can't see the benefit of it sending light out horizontally rather than downwards.
Again, ask them to adjust the sensitivity so it doesn't come on so often. How long is the timer set for, I would rather have a light that stays on for a few minutes rather than one which is constantly on/off/on/off etc?

Do you have good curtains/blinds?
No reason for the light to penetrate your house if you have decent quality blackout coverings.

Speak to the neighbours straight away, get this sorted asap.

Our neighbours had a light installed in their kitchen such that it lit up the side of our house very brightly and shone a bright light into several of our windows.

They stopped using it immediately that we told them about it (it wasn’t an essential light, IYSWIM) and now it only comes in occasionally when Airbnbers are there.

Speak to the builders, the owners and the council. It's light pollution.
I have the same issue for the past 3 years!

Tell them, they probably don’t realise.

Lots of people use em dashes, you know? As a former journalist I use them all the time because it was standard in my industry. Just because people who can’t write have only just discovered them doesn’t mean it’s an AI-only trait.

Definitely not unreasonable! Hope you took a picture/video to show them, they will probably be mortified!!

It's also the random bolding and the floral language. Its a dead giveaway.

@Nozache

You’re not filling me with confidence that talking to the builders, owners and council is effective!

I wasn’t referring to the em dashes. There are several other clear signs of it being AI (I’m guessing Grok).

I agree it’s irritating to be accused of using AI for an em dash alone.

OP, we have two houses around us that have similar installed - I can only assume they are the same part of the national signaling system your neighbour is, and when the beacons of Gondor are lit sorry, wrong epic film.

Between these and car headlights I can only pray to maintain my current vision.

But do go and ask if there’s any way for them to change the angle, they simply might not realize how it’s affecting your home!

This. I'm a medical writer and I use em and en dashes all the time.

In my case it's a kiddy football club using the grounds of a sports field owned by the MoD.
They've installed LED floodlights that shine directly into my home from 100m away. I don't even need my own lights on, I have theirs!
Because its MoD the LA claim they can't enforce anything, but the MoD haven't installed them, the football club has.

People use em-dashes all the time if they're writing in Word or what have you, but it's not that easy to get them to show in a regular post unless you're copying and pasting from elsewhere - most people use en-dashes if they're using them informally (ime).

But yeah that light would annoy me too.

Speak to them OP, they can angle it down or put a cowl over it, tbh we should be pushing for all external lights to be dark skies friendly especially in the world of super bright LED's.

OP this post has made me laugh.
Definitely tell them , they may not know it's angled at you.

It's not just the em dashes. It's the rhetorical question style. It's pretty obvious and distinctive.

Oh yes you can (I literally started a thread on this 3 minutes ago).

Yes, made my day too! 🤣

OP where can we subscribe to your blog? :)

https://27bslash6.com/halogen.html

Definitely speak to them. Our builders installed a security light and we didn’t realise that it was shining directly into the living room of the flat opposite.
The owners of the flat came round all guns blazing obviously expecting us to argue about it but we just switched it off! Most people are accommodating and don’t want to make their neighbours life hell.

I had a message from my neighbour across the road asking me if I wouldn’t mind swapping the bulb in my outside light for a dimmer one, because it shines straight into her bedroom. I said of course, and changed it the same day.

I had a bizarre message from her shortly afterwards saying she was in tears with gratitude, it had kept her awake for six months but she hadn’t dared say anything in case I was offended. She was ‘blown away’ I’d just changed it without issue.

Couldn’t believe it. I mean, I’m not some kind of terrifying monster. We’ve always smiled and said hello and commented on the weather when we’ve seen each other, so I cannot fathom why she’d found it so hard to ask me to do something about it.

It’s just an outside light; You’re not critiquing your neighbour’s taste/religion/dog. They probably have no idea it’s bothering you, and would probably be perfectly happy to do something about it.

Unless there’s some kind of back story about how you’ve been at war for 17 years about a hedge/dog/wind chime.

www.cpre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/light-pollution-as-a-statutory-nuisance-a-how-to-guide.pdf