AIBU to report neighbours for repeated Sunday DIY and early noise?

[Senso]

Ndn started with the leaf blower at 8am this morning.

For several months they have being doing diy on Sundays, all day. I did go round last Sunday and asked them if it would be possible to have Sundays as a non diy day as per our local council’s guidelines. I was met with stony faces and reluctant acknowledgment of the council’s rules re diy hours.

This morning, the leaf blower started followed by shouting from neighbour on the other side.

WIBU to report them for noise nuisance?

8am is actually fine for jobs and DIY… some people like to be productive at the weekend … just because it’s Sunday doesn’t mean they can’t do DIY ?

Hardly - I live on the other side of the world 😅

Sunday might be the only day they can do the work. Id have thought it's a busy day generally for DIY and surprised your council say it should be avoided.
You can report it if you want but I don't know what they can do about it unless it's a council owned house.

So you're only allowed to do DIY on Saturday mornings? That seems excessively restrictive. Aren't Bank Holiday weekends when everyone does DIY?

Op isn't being unreasonable at all. Also, what kind of asshole uses a leaf blower? Just sweep them up.

Recommended DIY Hours in most borough's is
Weekdays: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM (though up to 8:00 PM is often accepted)
Saturdays: 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Sundays and Bank Holidays: It is generally recommended to avoid noisy work entirely, or reserve it for quiet emergencies

I had this for 3 years every weekend and had to stop going in my garden. They moved in the end and I have my weekends back but I complained to the council on multiple occasions and was extremely stressed. They took it seriously and wrote letters to the neighbours. I had various discussions (resulting in almost a complete fall out) with the neighbour and in the end they just moved.
it was a miserable time though so you have my total sympathy
.

would leaf blowing be considered home maintenance and not diy?
part of routine yard work and 8am is not that early?

I think the threshold for enforcement is really high. Our council only specifies you must be “reasonable” about noise and discuss it with your neighbour, no specific times.

We’re the DIYers (bought a wreck) but our neighbour felt reasonable meant we had to get her permission to drill a hole in a wall on a weekend afternoon. After many attempts to find a solution and a lot of abusive texts from her, she said she’d report us to the council and we could expect a visit and a big fine.

I have no doubt she’s reported every single time we’ve used a hammer or drill on the weekend since but, nearly three years later, we’re yet to have any contact from the council. We never start super early or go late and very rarely do DIY both weekend days so I guess the council have bigger fish to fry.

What ?

"Unidentifiable woman makes up fictional council rules about perfectly normal domestic noise."

It's hardly Woodward and Bernstein.

DIY is like jack hammering the driveway or taking walls out. Not a leaf blower for gods sake. What, no mowing next? Both myself and my husband work full time busy jobs, if we couldn’t do basic DIY like sanding or mowing on Sundays we wouldn’t get anywhere! You sound a joy to live next door to…

I feel very fortunate that since we moved in last year we have built good NDN relationships both sides, we have a whatsapp group for each side, and always let each other know if we’re planning anything noisy, and checking in advance etc. Getting on well with neighbours is so important…

Can you take a different approach and get to know them better? People are more likely to want to avoid pissing off people they actually like, I find.

I don't think this is a big deal tbh, mildly annoying but I'd rather have a leaf blower at 8am than parties at 11pm or screaming kids and sweary arguments or domestics. We live in the countryside and the farmers start at 5am in the summer, I don't mind it, people have lives to get on with.

We bought a renovation project when we moved to our current house. We’d have been screwed if diy noise wasn’t allowed at weekend. We’d worked all week so weekend was all we had. Likewise, weekends are week I mow the lawn. Similar to a leaf blower in noise. I’d say before 7:30 is unreasonable for machine noise but after is fine

It can be seen as a statutory nuisance if it happens on a regular basis.

OP report the DIY to the council and keep a log. Report every time. I’m not sure about the leaf blower, as annoying as they are.

This was my thought, it's gardening rather than diy, which is rather different.

Nobody has ‘rules’ in their area. It will be guidance (therefore not enforceable) under the Environmental Act 1990. Legally the House aspect for us all is 7am - 11pm. The guidance on the other aspects people are mentioning will also most specifically be referring to ‘heavy machinery’. A lead blower isn’t heavy machinery but can be considered a nuisance if it’s used, say, directly outside your open window repeatedly every day or very frequently (suspect he isn’t doing that?). Normal DIY isn’t going to hit the volume levels to warrant a complaint unfortunately. Even you do put a noise complaint on, they don’t move to enforcements anyway. They ask you to try and resolve it amicably and they would try to record the volume of noise over a period of time (banging on walls is unlikely to let this threshold as DIY is reasonable and presumably it’s a shared wall).

It won’t last forever.

They won't. Council will send a letter for neighbours regarding noise nuisance, and you'll receive confirmation letter too. Your details won't be shared. It simply says that complaints were receive regarding this,etc.

Just put in earplugs.

I wouldn’t mind if the renters who are my neighbours had a lawn mower and leaf blower going at 7am at least they’d be looking after the shithole of a garden which has been neglected by all the renters who’ve ever lived in it.

I would much prefer to live next to someone who took some pride in their home than someone who didn’t

I thought the same thing! Between the machinery, the cows and the cockerels, 8am seems incredibly reasonable to me!

We have a rule that ' cement mixers allowed on at 8' - means we also let the kids in the garden from 8am. Think anything from 8am is OK

Our local authority has exactly the same rules AND would respond to a complaint. They’d probably send you a sheet to start to make a log of the times and amount of noise as a start. Go for it.

Anyone doing anything noisy at 08.00am on a weekend is an arsehole. Surely you can find a non noisy DIY / Gardening task and let people have some peace until 09.00. And a leaf blower? Absolute noise pollution. ( what leaves are even falling in June?).

@Senso I know how you feel. My NDN have one of hose fast boiling kettles, normally it isn't too bad but due to the heatwave we all have our windows open and it wakes up our pet fox who sleeps at the end of the garden. On Sunday morning the husband had it on at seven thirty and shortly after that their microwave started dinging.

It's when the harvest or silage is coming in and the big empty wagons are bouncing through the village like a set of kettle drums at 1am! Cows and cockerels would be bliss in comparison!