Noisy neighbour WWYD

[Newhousecrying]

Noise from our attached neighbours are awful. We can hear their tv and music word for word. I downloaded a decibel meter and it’s reaching 73, averaging 58. This happens almost daily (at least 5x a week) from about 16:00 to 1am. We approached them and they were very defensive and said they’re within their rights and if we didn’t like it we should get a detached house. I understand there would be some noise but surely there’s a limit?!?

DP wants to chat with them again and work out some kind of schedule but from their tone when we spoke to them I’m a bit afraid to speak to them again. The noise is worse in the main bedroom (so the 1am tv is terrible) but I was in the box room at the other side of the house and heard/ felt it (super loud bass) during my work call!

what's the best thing to do here? We want to be good neighbours but They obviously give no sh*ts about us.

Finish the renovations as quickly and cheaply as you can and sell it.

If you go down the official route of complaints, you will never be able to sell and the neighbours won't change a thing.

It would be interesting to know if your vendors sold because of the noise and if they had had a dispute that they didn't declare.

I know someone who had this with their neighbour so they turned their sound system to the wall, maxed the volume, put a particular song on repeat and went away for the weekend. Was surprisingly effective.

I think they got pissed off with your noise and don't care about their own noise now.

It's a tricky situation.

I imagine it's because most tv's have the speakers at the rear, and theirs is positioned on your party wall. They are increasing the volume as you are getting the "benefit" of the sound rather than them.

A fairly inexpensive solution (when compared to attempting to soundproof your house/ move house/ make an official reportable complaint) might be to offer to buy them a soundbar, so the sound is projected into their room rather than through your walls.

If they are reasonable people, they might agree to try this. Of course, if it is retaliation, this might make matters worse!

I’d ask again, could you suggest something constructive like they could move the speaker? In terms of declaring when you sell - it’s a grey area. You have to declare disputes but I don’t class reporting a neighbour 1 time as a dispute

One of them might have hearing issues and do t think it’s your business to know about their health issues

The thing with renovations is that it is for your benefit, you don’t need to be there but they have to put up with the noise. It’s enough to drive anyone angry. Especially if they work from home. It is retaliation trust me. Any complaints will escalate it. Your renovations have pissed of the neighbors. It’s why I now live in a detached house. It’s was weeks of hell. All the noise and disruption for no benefit

Thanks everyone. We don’t really want to complain or retaliate (the speaker was a joke). We discussed sending an apology gift for the renovation noise but seems a bit after the fact now. Don’t know if moving is the solution because we’d make a loss and have to move out to a much less nice area to afford a detached.

We would 100% be open to this if the issue is the sound projection. Not sure how the best way to approach it would be. Not keen to report them because it doesn’t seem very nice. We only spoke to them because we thought they didn’t realise how bad the sound transmits across the wall and it was late (like 23:45). Realise now it wasn’t the best approach, especially after the renovation work. Maybe we just need some time to let things cool before anything else.

In my experience noisy neighbors know they are noisy and do not care.

Contact your council and keep a log however, I did all this with my old home and it was useless. Also you need to keep complaining to them.

Soundproofing is really good but it can be expensive. But the bass seeps into your soul and the trouble is they are not affected by it.

I would give it a couple of weeks to let things calm, and then try speaking to them again to see if they can keep it down after a certain time of night. I'm in a 1947 terrace and we can hear the neighbours TV through the wall at times, the worst is then having sex! But I'm sure they can here our kids playing / shouting sometimes etc. The difference is we make it work by being considerate of each other. They once got an air pump for one of their tropical pets that I could hear through the wall, they kindly sent it back and got another type.

If they don't care then I think you've got to report it.

To go back to your initial point - yes there are both action and limit levels for occupational noise.
80dB for action levels where you need advice etc etc
85dB for limit
73dB - even though it sounds very close to 80dB it really isn’t, it’s the sound of operating a noisy hoover.

but feel free to contact the council - they’ll probably give you a noise meter to record it

What do you mean by a schedule?

Not after night 99% of the time? Fine. To fit in with your own day to days? Not so much. We’re a fairly noisy family (autistic sons, one son plays guitar, husband sometimes works from home which involves loud equipment from drills to speakers), but we keep to day hours and have made sure our neighbours know that if are interfering with sleep for shifts or any other reason they are welcome to let us know and we’ll do our best to work around them.

Equally when our neighbours make noise (Church house services with a choir on one side (quite early in a Sunday when DH works Saturday nights) and parties on the other) we try to be tolerance as well. Life has to happen after all.

We've recently got a soundbox for our TV, and when I go to bed I have to set it to late night mode as DH is a bit deaf and doesn't realise how much the vibration can be heard upstairs especially when he's watching The Walking Dead
Bassy noise is a bugger to solve as it's as much the vibration as the actual sound. But 1.20am is taking the piss - if you're not intending on moving then I'd start taking action with the council.

Schedule is probably the wrong word. We mean just not after midnight, maybe 00:30. Last night music was on until about 00:45. It’s definitely not that I expect zero noise. It’s that it’s so loud and nearly all the time. And the bass feels like it’s shaking through the walls and floors.

After midnight seems perfectly reasonable but they’re probably expecting to be yelled at so defensive. They may have had awful neighbours before, it leaves it’s mark.

Definitely need to try again then- maybe start with ‘I think I came over a bit stronger than I meant to when we chatted before, sorry about that. Any chance we can try again?’

Do you have small children if yes buy them a drum kit and yous ear plugs

If it's an older property you may only have a single-skin wall between the properties. They put up very little resistance to sound. Plus, if you've newly renovated and chosen a minimal look you may be lacking soft furnishings to absorb the noise.

There are acoustic plasterboards that if they're installed correctly can dramatically reduce noise transmission.

Are you really surprised that they were defensive? It does sound like they are loud and inconsiderate but they have lived next to your renovation noise for months, presumably including the hot weather in the summer when windows etc needed to be open, and now you are complaining to them? I’m sorry but I suspect they think that’s a bit rich, and you are going to have to live with it for a bit. If they are retaliating then they will give up eventually. Even if they are not you are going to need reasonable neighbourly relations for when your renovations resume.

At no point did the neighbours approach us to say the noise was bad

I’m sorry OP but that doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve never complained about neighbours’ renovation work (as long as it takes place within reasonable hours) because there is really no point; everyone understands that there is no quiet way to knock down a wall or sand a load of floorboards and that it is generally temporary. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t very unpleasant and stressful to live next to the noise and dust of even the most considerate builders - and you don’t even know if your contractors were considerate as you were so frequently absent! Your new neighbours might well be totally unreasonable, selfish people but from what you have explained of the recent history your moral high ground is pretty wobbly.

I’m not trying to claim any moral high ground. Just asking for advice on how to best move forward.

So the silver lining here is that they’ll continue with their music and we can DIY whenever/ however we want.

I don’t wish to minimise the problem as it’s clearly causing you distress but I would start by borrowing or hiring a reliable decibel meter to get a clearer understanding of the problem. 73dB is quite loud but 58dB isn’t. A normal conversation is only 60dB.

Telly house is awful like worse than someone just playing music for a few hours. We had the same for months it made me very depressed and constantly on edge in my house we reported it to the council you need to do the same