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?

Unless you live in Switzerland the council is going to laugh you out of town

Go on, cheer them up

How on earth can a council restrict DIY Sunday work. What if someone works Monday-Saturday. Does that mean they are never allowed to do any DIY?? That's just absurd.

Surely the Sunday ban relates to contract work and not Joe Bloggs hammering a nail on his wall or firing his lawn mower up on a Sunday afternoon.

Sorry for not being clear, that was what I meant by machinery! We also have a quad bike user who loves to leave the noisy engine running for a good ten minutes in the mornings before noisily taking off! Oddly, I always think of cities and such as being nosier but given the regular noise threads on here, clearly they aren’t.

Exactly, Councils don’t have the power to create laws on what people can and cannot do!

I don't think the Council will do anything about a leaf blower during daytime hours.

I think expecting half the weekend to be diy free is pretty unreasonable to those trying to get things done in their house!

I live in a very rural area, and I have to say for the most part it's really quiet, but even then it's far from quiet, I'm woken up early by so many different song birds, which sounds idyllic, but not always. The neighbour has a turkey, cockerel (which sounds off all hours of the night) and geese, which can make an awful racket. The other day, due to the heat, the tractors spent two whole nights doing something in the adjacent field, so that's loud when you have sleep with the windows open due to the heat.

When they separate the calves from the mothers, the poor mums can cry for days, so that's another noise.

Although the few neighbours I have are respectful of Sundays and bank holidays, the one with all the animals frequently starts using chainsaws and machinery on Sundays. Even on Christmas Eve afternoon, I was trying to watch a festive film with the kids, and couldn't hear the TV well as he rolled up with his petrol leaf blower.... The same neighbour decided one summer to blast loud music until 2am one summer, on more than one occasion. We complained to them and to their credit they've not done so since.

I have never heard anything so ridiculous - how can a council police what work people are doing in their own homes on a weekend. And I would hardly call leaf blowing DIY. And 8am is not early. When do you think someone who works 5 days a week gets their garden chores done. If you were my neighbour I would be doing it more. Miserable person

How many leaves does your neighbour have to be using a leaf blower on JUNE?

Leaf blowing and gardening is NOT DIY!!!!

Your council has banned DIY on Sundays? That’s insane! What if Sunday is your only day off? Bizarre.

I think a lot of people who work full time hours will be doing DIY on weekends and bank holidays. When else would they fit it in?

What do they do in Switzerland ?

They didn't tell me which lying fucker neighbour reported me for my dog supposedly barking between 11pm and 6am, when my dog was in actual fact asleep on my face between about 9:30pm and 7am every night... at a time when the 6 or 7 dogs in adjoining gardens had a daily 10pm 15-minute barkfest 😑

Serious question OP.

We work Monday to Friday, so when are we supposed to do our gardening and DIY?

People are just trying to fit their DIY around their working hours. As long as it’s not ridiculously early (6am) or late I don’t see the problem. If that’s the worst thing your neighbours do then consider yourself lucky.

The council will send a letter reminding them of the rules. This may or may not change your neighbours’ behaviour but it will certainly piss them off.

Never understood people using leafblowers, what's wrong with rakes and brushes?

Renovation noise will cease after they are finished.

Why not just ask the neighbours when they will be finished and give them a copy of the noise guidelines and request that they do their best to follow them.

The leaf blowing ones - 8 is a little early but I would only do the same if they habitually broke the rules.

YABU to think using a leaf blower is DIY. It isn't.

not where I live, complainants details are kept confidential BUT any noise complaint must be accompanied with a 4 week nuisance diary before the council will act.

When would you propose they can do DIY then OP?

I assume the neighbours you are referring to work full time - so would have the option of evenings or weekends?

Our neighbours do DIY really late into evenings sometimes - think 11pm and only when it hits that point will DP say something but it is always a discrete ‘we are going to bed now please would you mind being quiet?’ - and they are. They were power washing till about 10pm the other week. We’ve had carpet cleaners and general hammering noises till almost midnight before

But they are otherwise great neighbours - polite and quiet otherwise. Choose your battles wisely

yup I had the same thing with an unpleasant neighbour. At the time noise nuisance complaints were automatically belived and the council's first action was to send a letter to the "accused". The first complaint came to nothing but when the complainer tried again, I phoned the council and told them that I had taken legal advice and that while I knew that they would not give me details of the complainant, I felt sure that my solicitor would be able to obtain them because I was a victim of harassment. Oddly this resulted in an assurance by the head of their environmental department (yes it was him, I checked the name on their website) that the complaint would go not further and that that complainant would not be given creedence in the future. They also changed their process and now noise nuisance is not automatically belived, any complainant has to keep a 1 month diary and submit it with their complaint.

My experience of environmental health departments is that where you can evidence sustained breaches of the rules, then they're positively keen to take action. What they're less good with is one-off or occasional breaches, even if they're on a far greater scale. So DIY or machinery noise they can cope with, raves so loud they make your house vibrate, not so much. I've also found them very helpful to deal with, and very understanding of the toll that constant noise takes on a person. In your shoes, I'd have a chat and see what they say about the likely success of a complaint, what they would need and how it might all unfold.

Agree! We’ve just bought our first leaf blower. Been raking and brushing our 2acres until now and it’s been fine. Definitely don’t need a leaf blower in a smaller garden, we had a lovely good sized garden in town with lots of trees and it would only take half an hour at most to rake. Also why do they have leaves to blow at this time of year?!

Also why do they have leaves to blow at this time of year?!

Because in a drought or extreme heat, deciduous trees sacrifice some leaves to dry out and fall rather that weakening the entire tree. It's a self-preservation response.