Neighbours' building works affecting my mental health. How to cope?

[msfring]

Trying to type this without sounding dramatic. My neighbour has been doing building works for three weeks now. Drilling from 9am until around 6. Scaffolding up, heavy machinery. Knocking walls down that are the other side of my wall. It was OK the first couple of days, but I work from home and am starting to find it is affecting me quite significantly. I can wear ear plugs but I am finding meetings and delivering training more and more difficult. I don't have anywhere else I can work from. I've asked him how long he is going to be doing work for and the only thing he can tell me is 'the foreseeable future, possibly a few months to a year'. I am considering moving house. It is 7 days a week. I feel like I am going loopy. I'm not in love with my house but do like it here. Is it crazy considering moving into another rental just to get away from the noise? Feeling quite tearful and a bit ridiculous!

Sorry op. I'm sure the noise won't be so bad for all that time. Could you either rent a desk somewhere or if he could tell you which time periods will be noisiest maybe you could consider an AirBNB? Go somewhere nice to make it a working holiday?

Are there any of those rent a desk type office spaces near you? That would get you out during the weekdays at least.

Sympathies, I would utterly hate that as well. Assuming he's following local noise/building guidelines I'm not sure there's anything you can do about it though.

I'd feel the same but the building project won't be this level of noise all the way through. They will get all the big jobs out of the way petty quickly, I imagine, and move on to quieter decorating jobs.

Been there, done that and it is very stressful (in fact I can hear my neighbours’ building work as I type this!)
7 days a week is too much and I’m sure there are regulations about this, check with your local authority.

Seven days a week so on Saturdays and Sundays. Surely these days would be restricted though you probably don't work these days but would appreciate the peace.

There ate rules about how long building can go on daily, and at weekends — check your local authority. Typically it’s 8 till 6 weekdays, 8 till 1 Saturdays and no work at all on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

When you are delivering training or in meetings, are you using a headset or just on loudspeaker?

I worked in a noisy office once (when I say noisy..... I mean NOISY and not just normal office chatter etc) and a game changer for me was headphones.
I played music when working which blanked it out completely and for meetings, the headphones meant there was no interference from the background noise.

Worked for me.👍

They should not be working 7 days a week, you can complain about this legitimately. Otherwise, assuming they have planning permission there is not a huge amount you can do. Is there a public library or somewhere you could work? I feel your pain as I had to deal with this while trying to work and look after a baby, it is really grim. I do agree with other posters though that the intense noise probably won’t last the whole duration of the build. Plastering, brick laying etc is not as noisy. The sound of a scaffolding drill still makes me twitch even now and it’s years ago I went through this.

If you are on reasonable terms with your neighbours there might be some room for negotiation e.g. you could ask them to avoid noisiest work when you’re delivering training.

A few months to a year? You would not be remotely ridiculous to consider moving. That's awful. Just because it's building doesn't suddenly make it ok. Imagine if it was domestic noise at that level for that length of time and frequency? You could get him told off for that (whatever it is the council would do, slap an ASBO or something).
Look into what he's allowed hours and days wise yes, but even if he has to do less at the weekends you're still stuck with the weeks.
How easily could you move @msfring ?
Sympathies. 💐

Go to one of those go-working spaces where you can book enclosed offices for meeting, training purposes.

I can imagine how disruptive it is OP.

I'm having some work done at the moment and on the noisy days I used noise reducing loop earplugs with my headset. I reduced about 90% of the noise.? & I could ignore it completely in meetings.

I know that's not ideal and the 7 days needs to stop to give you a break, but perhaps it will help short term?

I have heard this elsewhere. I would find some official documentation on this and pass it to your neighbour. We have a local neighbour who is onto the exciting angle grinder phase of his building work so feel your pain.

Who would want to buy your house while all the building work is going on next door?

Better for your MH to rent office or desk space to work for the duration.

No family or friends nearby that have a spare bedroom you could rent to work in?

As you rent and aren’t overly attached to where you are living I would move.

You have the right to “quiet enjoyment” of your rental property & clearly you don’t have that so your LL might be able to break your lease or be sympathetic re any notice period.

I have never known any builders to work 7 days a week nonstop- most of them start early and finish early Mon- Fri. Are you sure its actually Sat and Sun as well (or does it just feel like it ) as that seems a bit unlikely they wouldnt have even one day off like, ever....

Also- surely the drilling cant be 9 hours non stop every day? I've had significant building works done to my house and the drilling was horrible but sporadic - never went on for 9 hours constantly without a break. Drilling is part of building a structure but its not required constantly.

I am not dismissing how horrible it can be but I do wonder if you are stressed and it feels worse than it is in reality.

I would look into renting a small office during the day so you can have some respite

It shouldn’t be 7 days a week. Do you have a party wall agreement if you’re attached?

The noisiest period is usually at the beginning of a project wouldn’t you say? I think it will taper off but in the meantime you could ask them not to work on a weekend. I wouldn’t make a huge deal of it because you might want to do your own building work one day. I live in a close and we’ve all had to be quite patient with each other’s building work.
I run training from home and use a headset, which I would recommend if you’re not currently wearing one.

@msfring have you checked the legalities of the project?

The most inconsiderate people are the ones who are most likely to have skipped certain steps. Your local planning and development team might be able to help. Those hours don't sound right.

Are they working on your Party Wall? Is your LL aware of the dorks? He should put this in place. They cannot work 7 days a week and as others have said there will be restrictions on times. Did you or LL get notified of the works - do they need planning / have they got planning?

But longterm building works not illegal, as long as the neighbour sticks to the permitted hours (which at present they're not, if they're working straight through weekends). There's no basis for an ASBO if the rules about permitted building hours are obeyed.

At least the building work has a purpose. We have unnecessary, pointless noise from neighbours for the sake of it.

You have my sympathies OP. We lived next to a building site during Covid. They were building a couple of hundred flats. We moved (for a few reasons) but now I am jealous of the people who live there without the building works! The area is really nice! 🤣

How attached are you to your home? I’d also look into the hours they are allowed to work and ask your neighbour what they are doing to give you an idea of what might be to come.

I fully sympathise. I own a small office (converted ground floor shop front) and a new woman bought the flat/living accommodation upstairs. Her building work (full renovation, new reconfiguring rooms and staircase etc) took over a year. It was a nightmare and shredded my nerves. It wasn't just the noise, it was the literally shaking of the property with heavy machinery, buildings just pushing over brick internal walls, etc just randomly, made it feel like an earthquake. I tried to be polite with the builders at first, but they were neanderthals and just shrugged when I suggested they give me warning if they were going to knock down a wall or remove a chimney stack. Also caused a nightmare for blocking access to my drive where I parked my car - no consideration at all, and when I went to ask them to move one of their vans so I could get the car off the drive, they'd just shrug and say they were busy and would get around it it "later". It was utterly awful. Then when I thought they'd finally finished, they started doing the back garden (separated from my office by a couple of windows and a wall) - they were rebuilding the garden wall and laying patio slabs using an angle grinder - day after day of screeching angle grinder literally a few feet away from where I was working. Couldn't open the office door because of the clouds of dust they were causing. The owner never came near - when she finally moved in, I told her how awful it had been and how the builders had been, but she just shrugged. Then people say you should try to be nice to your neighbours whatever they do to you. Sod that. If they don't give a shit, then neither will I!