Neighbor troubles: Please advise

ughh, all their neighbour troubles threads on ILX are for way more serious stuff than mine, but still, no sleep, cranky

downstairs neighbour seems ok (have barely spoken to him), but would really like an evening/night of not listening to his TV very loud through the floor - it's impossible to sleep through, but it also makes me sad to sit in my own living room in the evening trying to listen to music on headphones with the muffled shouting of Sky News seeping through

last night: 6pm to 11pm, midnight to 2am (when I pounded repeatedly on the door which he did not answer but eventually he did turn it off), 3am to 4:something - maybe I should be thankful for the gaps, but in some ways it's annoying me even more, like, you turned it back ON at 3am?

not completely sure whether the soundproofing is just bad and therefore I'm the jerk - soundproofing is v good horizontally though, there's a baby and toddler next door and our bedrooms share a wall but I can't hear them from inside the flat

I mean as a one-off I wouldn't care, and last night was the worst (latest/loudest) yet, but every night. zxzjclk$£%!

You need to go talk to your neighbour about approaching the landlord together about soundproofing.

Londoners, what's the best way to deal with a neighbour with a bitey Staffie? My friend's whippet got attacked for a second time by the same dog last night - blood was drawn and the whippet, who is 12, is at the vet for shock and a leg wound - and the owner of the Staffie did the aggressive man-up underclass hosebeast thing instead of taking responsibility for his dog. Friend reported the incident to police. Is there anything else that can be done?

drop in once and let him know his tv is at unacceptably loud levels, and far too late to boot.

After that, his landlord, cops.

Worked a treat for me wrt music from next door, and i was sorry i hadnt acted immediately.

Ps i'm not the confrontational type and this stuff is v unnatural to me, but sorry you just gotta do this

Don't cops usually take away dogs t4hat bite other dogs. or is it only if they bite humans?

he aggressive man-up underclass hosebeast thing

could somebody break this down for me

I don't know what Englandhs version of animal control is, but I'd call them.

Yeah, gonna drop round this evening to talk to him, or write a note (as polite but non-passive-aggressive as I can manage) if he doesn't answer the door. Just felt like grousing first.

He is in his 60s and otherwise seems a fairly quiet bookish sort, so presumably hard of hearing rather than outright antisocial, which is why I haven't said anything yet, but if he's going to keep such odd hours - and they're getting odder - on weeknights then it's got to be done.

No idea about the dog, sorry; hope it gets sorted out though, doesn't sound like fun.

Aero, I hate using the word 'chav' but the dude - a lout, judging by my friend's report - got all up in my friend's grill and started threatening him. Possibly some of the threats were homophobic in nature.

police should have to deal with it, i'd think

We moved from a large, incredibly well soundproofed flat to an old terraced victorian house. Forgetting we had neighbours, we came home after the pub with some mates, cranked the music up as usual and continued till the wee hours. Next morning our new neighbour, a man in his 50s or 60s knocked on the door and politely but firmly explained that this wasn't acceptable behaviour in these sorts of houses, that the walls are very thin, and that he was going to knock while the music was going on but felt it more polite to speak to us in the morning.

I guess I was so embarrassed, and the guy was so polite that now I'm very conscious of making noise, particularly after 10pm. I mean, I can hear his alarm clock in the morning so he must have been PISSED OFF!

Sounds like he dealt with it in a pretty reasonable way actually.

yep.

yep. I'd say he did it the best way. Better than a note or anything. He wasn't rude or angry, just calmly explained that it had affected him, that the walls are very thin, that he understood we weren't doing it on purpose etc... So yeah, I'm very careful now.

my neighbour above (i think directly above but not sure) has been making a bit of a racket recently, lots of loud music and stuff. i always hear him playing guitar which doesn't bother me but now he's listening to that dance shite, you know, beats everywhere.

i actually know him from being here 2.5 years, at least to say hi or have a small talk with, and this almost makes it worse. was thinking of texting and saying "hi mark, my flatmate's room is below you and she said there was a lot of noise recently, she's really annoying me about it, can you sort this out?"

Man I sypathize with those of you dealing with noisy upstairs and downstairs neighbors. We went through a period where a neighbor upstairs from us routinely worked out on her treadmill at 2:00 in the morning. And, despite our many friendly attempts at explaining why this was unusual, she refused to see anything wrong with her behavior and/or modify in any way. Since it was an older building it rattled everything.

still dealing with an annoying upstairs neighbor situation, the start of it is described here: Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

we decided to go ahead with trying to sleep train our baby. we preemptively baked cookies and gave them to our neighbors on either side and upstairs, with a note basically saying "we're going to be sleep training our baby, she's going to be crying, please be patient with us." ran through the process on fri. and sat. night with no complaints. last night, my wife is trying to get the baby to sleep, and admittedly the baby has been crying very loudly for about half an hour, and the upstairs neighbor starts thumping on the floor again. we don't really know what to do. eventually i decide to go upstairs to try to talk to them reasonably and see if we can figure out something to do where the baby can cry sometimes (which is going to happen) without a passive-aggressive response from upstairs. i knock on the door twice, no one answers, but we can hear them walking around. so instead i write a very polite note, basically saying we don't want to bother anyone, we'd like to talk with them about anything we can do to make the situation better. i put our phone number and email address on the note. this morning, they write a note back that essentially just says "please do whatever you can to cut down on noise, we work from home and the noise is very disturbing." the note was reasonably polite but does not include any concrete suggestions for things we could do or any hint of compromise. it also does not include any way to contact them back or even their names, which blocks off any possibility of a discussion unless i write them another note back like an 11-year-old.

i have no interest in being confrontational or making them deal with our noise. i sincerely don't want to bother anyone. but i don't really know what i can do if they're only going to communicate by thumping on our ceiling and are unwilling to talk to us directly.

ugh you have a baby, babies cry, not much anyone can do about that. the sooner they stop thumping on the floor and disturbing baby, the sooner she will be sleep-trained and less cry-y, so they should just STFU and let you get on with it. ESPECIALLY since you already went out of your way to apologise in advance and offer to take suggestions on things you could do to lessen the impact on yr neighbours. i mean really, fuck those guys!!!

Still no reason to be thumping on your floor on a non-work day. If you see the other neighbours (not these people) in question, and they ask how things are going, mention it's all good apart from badly socialised idiots above thumping n floor.

Is there some kind of landlord type to mediate? Do you rent or own?

we rent, there is a landlord but i am hoping to avoid turning it into a big thing, especially since we are making more noise than them. feel better now that i vented all that, but i basically just wish they would talk to us about it instead of being weird and noncommunicative. if they're the neighbors i'm thinking of, there have been times when i've run into them in the hallway or on the back stairs and said hello to get no response. they seem kind of supershy and antisocial. it's also weird because we've lived in two apartments in this building and have literally no noise issues at all. i hear them walking upstairs but other than that i hear nothing from the other apartments. so i don't know if their apartment just has worse insulation, or it's because they're on the second floor, or if they're just supersensitive about sounds. or maybe we're just the shitty noisy neighbors.

That sucks though, sounds like you've done everything you can and should do. In my first post-college apartment I ended up next to a lady that called the cops every time I turned on my television during the first three days after I moved in. Never knocked, no attempts to talk to me about it, no attempts to deal through the landlord, just went directly to calling the cops. Each time they showed up though, they laughed it off and said they were constantly getting calls from this particular person. But I still ended up spending the rest of my year-long lease doing everything with headphones on and never inviting friends over. A big part of why that was one of the worst years of my life.

You inherently aren't the "shitty noisy neighbors," because the source of your noise is a BABY.

xpost

My downstairs neighbor used to bang on the ceiling if I walked too heavily (ie. normally). I had to tread lightly to avoid his wrath. This was barefooted as well. I don't altogether blame the guy though; it was a shitty two story walk-up. The place practically shook when someone came up the stairs.

They did choose to bring a noise-making thing into their home, you know, they do bear some culpability. It's like saying someone with a dog can't be a shitty noisy neighbour because dogs always bark, it's in their nature and they're fairly uncontrollable that way.

HOWEVER, n/a, even to baby-hating me it sounds like you've done nothing but be good neighbours: if you've gone round and explained and been willing to attempt compromise then your end is all good. Not entirely sure how to resolve the situation if they're unwilling to talk, but it sounds like you're doing the best you can. Is there a separate room for the baby to sleep in that you can try to cheaply sound-proof? You're in a band, right, maybe someone has some soundproofing materials they can give you for free? Morally it shouldn't be solely your responsibility to work this out, I know, but if it's affecting you all negatively then that might help.

it's not really the same thing, though - dogs can be trained not to bark uncontrollably. like, if n/a's baby was actually a toddler/older child and just screamed and cried all the time, then i would have less sympathy bc shit man you should 'train' your kids not to act like that. but she's a little baby, and they're trying to sleep train her so she WON'T cry when she's put down to sleep (i guess that is what sleep training entails??).

HOWEVER, n/a, even to baby-hating me it sounds like you've done nothing but be good neighbours: if you've gone round and explained and been willing to attempt compromise then your end is all good.

yeah otm - baby-hating, working-from-home me would usually totally hate on unexplained and persistently crying babies, but fair warning and cookies (cookies!) would totally mollify me - and from a practical perspective give me a chance to prepare to work from a café or something that morning, or just arrange to do some shopping or run errands. and ignoring notes and cookies is just rude - you took note of their initial frustration and have pretty much gone out of your way to alleviate it, and they're refusing to even acknowledge this?!

I feel bad about that, I have lived in a lot of apartments and three things I don't do:

-complain about baby or kid noise (I find it delightful, adults are so dour, at least someone is excited to be alive, I am happy you had a baby)

-dogs barking or cat crying (that neighbor's dog is stopping someone from stealing your stuff as well as your neighbor's)

-bad smells or chemical smells (unless food is rotten)

I know more than one person to have child protective services called on them (anonymously!) when their baby cried too much, either thanks to colic or sleep training. In both cases the case was dismissed, but that's a serious form of neighbor harassment with potentially very real repercussions. I think one couple moved. The other escalated to Total War.

well we've been in this apt for two years now and as far as i can tell they've been up there the whole time. this thumping thing just started about a week ago and has mostly been in response to serious loud crying/screaming. we're going to try a different sleep training plan that will hopefully be smoother and thus result in fewer extended crying jags.

Babies are different than other noise issues, because there is no volume control or on/off switch or heading off to the neighborhood watering hole. Some babies cannot be pacified, despite exhaustive efforts by the caregivers. That's just the reality of infant existence, and others should be sympathetic and understanding.

Changing the sleep training plan sounds like a good idea.

I realize it doesn't help to be told that they're the unreasonable ones; it doesn't solve your problem to be "right." But honestly where do people GET OFF complaining about things that are unavoidable in close living conditions?

My last place had an 8-yr old kid upstairs who jumped on and off of things and ran around and "vroom!"ed cars across the floor and all that stuff, and except for the few times it sounded like someone had dropped a BOWLING BALL, it didn't upset me or even inconvenience me all that much.

Life involves other human beings. Get over it, already.

And that's ME saying that!

Life involves other human beings. Get over it, already.

I would like this printed on a t-shirt.

i just moved into a new apartment, 2nd floor, 3 units in the building. the actual place is so good, the best one i've ever had. and the neighborhood and the price...everything about it is just perfect for us.

until.

the night we moved in, i hear the sounds of electric guitar coming from upstairs (3rd floor). at first i was ambivalent, even a bit pleased - i have some musical gear myself, which i never, ever play in my home, because i think it's too loud. i thought maybe this would mean i'd have a chance to occasionally turn on my amp to a low volume and play for a bit.

then he kept practicing. he moved from very pleasant and spare ambient picking patterns, straight into bad metal. the same riff, over and over. then a brief break, then back on again. this went on for a few hours. then again, all day and the next night. on sunday morning the sounds of metal riffage started at 9am, on the dot.

i heard him go downstairs and leave the building. phew, i thought. a bit later, his roommate, who i haven't met, came home. and then started practicing. she prefers to learn indie rock songs on bass, i think.

at the moment they're playing a duet, with one of them on guitar and the other on saxophone. on the four evenings i've been here, i'd say they play about 2-3 hours a day, spread out across 8 hours. in other words, about 1/3 of the time, they're practicing.

this is...madness? like...i haven't tried to sit down and watch tv or a movie or something since i moved in, but even if i did, there's a good chance that there'd be guitar hero riffs playing throughout a lot of it. i want to have some close friends over for a housewarming dinner thing - will we have to hear him play guitar throughout the evening?

i know what i have to do, and it is awful. i have to talk to him about it. to make things worse, he has the same name as mine and in some ways he is living out my dream. he gets to play music all the time in his apartment, AND he doesn't give a fuck about other people! so i know i have to talk to him, and of course i'll be polite and i will focus on working out an arrangement so maybe he can play during certain hours that won't bother me so much (and especially not after fucking midnight, which he did on friday night). or to at least compress the 2 hours of practice time into 2 continuous hours instead of spread out across the day.

i know a lot of people reading this would just be like "tell him to fuck off, use headphones or find a practice space like everyone else does in the city", and it blows because i know that's probably what i should do but i don't want my neighbor to hate me, even as he shows no awareness toward what i might want.

after midnight?

justifiable homicide, dont put yrself through the agonies of talking to him

"your honor, dmac said it was justifiable"

man that sucks. could you tell your apartment manager about it?

i could, maybe. i haven't met him yet, so i don't really know how he'd react to it. but also, i feel like before going to anyone else i need to talk directly to the person. but i don't want to.

can i pay someone $35 to do this for me? i will tip

srsly, id be like you ito actually speaking about it but theres nothing strange or pushy about a "i can hear you jamming eight hours a day, do you think thats not a bit much/loud?" and at least have it said

worst happens is he ignores and youll feel much better about hating him at that stage, and if you have a third party to take a complaint to then youve done the first thing theyll ask you to do.

From my experience (seven years in three close-quarters studio apartment buildings) apartment managers could care less about daytime noise complaints, unless you work nights and need to sleep during the day (an arrangement which should be disclosed to the manager before signing the lease, anyway).

If you want to preserve your mental health, there's no way around it, you've gotta bite that bullet and have yourself a good ol' fashioned neighbor-to-neighbor powwow ASAP.

Does he look like the kind of guy who likes desserts? Most people do. The classic midwestern kill-with-kindness technique is ideal for situations like this. You don't have to bake one, but just pick up a cherry or an apple or some other delicious seasonal fruit pie from your neighborhood grocery store bakery and hand it over to him with your list of demands. Blame it on your wife, if you've gotta. Say she made you. He'll never know, but he'll be approximately 100% more likely to comply.

list of demands

i think this is what is tripping me up at the moment. i don't know what is reasonable. i don't want to ask that he never ever plays. i sort of do, but i won't, rather. in some ways i am negotiating against myself here. is it weird to establish a certain number of minutes/hours per day that he can do his shit upstairs? as if things were working perfectly fine up until the 90th minute, then suddenly not at all? is it normal to be hardass? i don't want to be like that, i sympathize with this guy. he does things that i would have done, or did do, at his age. he annoys me the hell out of me. i understand this.

but still,

- i reasonably demand that he play no more than * hours a day,
- i reasonably demand that only play between the hours of ** and ***
- i reasonably demand that if his amp and/or stereo speakers are placed directly on the floor, he immediately elevate that shit off the ground ASAP, by any means necessary
- i reasonably demand the right to make him not play on evenings where i have something planned in my apartment that requires quiet (like a dinner party, watching a movie, recording the sounds of floorboards creaking, or activating my double action paper-towel holder). i would provide him advance notice.

*
**
*** i need more info from the neighbor before i reasonably demand it, but these will be the most important items. if he's usually home during the day, then i will very reasonably demand that he play during the day and not during the evenings when i'm home. i but if he also has a day job, then maybe he can only play up until 8 pm? and no more than an hour?

then i will very reasonably demand that he play during the day and not during the evenings when i'm home.

but even then, i don't want him to play more than a couple hours, even if i'm not there, because i love my animals and i want them to get good rest too during the day.

I hear ya (get it?) but when it comes to apartment life, the cold hard reality is that a nighttime noise curfew is the best you can do. You can certainly ask him to turn it down during the day, but without bringing microphones in to check decibel levels and create a legally enforceable monitoring and mitigation plan to be reviewed and approved by the landlord, pursuing that route is a lost cause. I think your best bet is to just focus on the nighttime noise and say please, I really needs my sleep, no rockin' after 11PM.

If you're being reasonable and honest about a legitimate complaint, and making the slightest effort to be friendly about it, I've found people will usually always be more accommodating than you might expect.

It might get better soon as it cools off and people have their windows open less?

i love my animals and i want them to get good rest too during the day.

Man, you've just given me the idea to leave the radio on while I'm out so those fuckers sleep at the same time that I sleep.

it doesn't work on mine, but you should check out the youtube genre of cat dog entertainment / tv for cats dogs / videos for cats dogs / etc

some of them are several hours long. when i catsit for a friend recently i put it on and they were transfixed

deffo ask if he can solo rehearse with headphones - of course you understand it’s cool to jam with the housemate, have fun - and keep it down after 11pm etc. saying you have animals, so elevating or cushioning the amp would be cool is probably also gonna sound reasonable: presumably he just likes being able to hear his playing, and isn’t actively looking to excessively fuck up anyone else’s day.

Does your first interaction with this guy have to be about this?

Might be easier if you invite him and his roommate over for dinner/drinks? and don't mention it at all.

Then bring it up on a subsequent interaction (you can say you hadn't realized before because you were away)

No need to be sneaky, no need to be disingenuous, just give him a pie! Pie is the answer. Pie is the irrefutable currency of kindness. If he didn't turn the music down after accepting and consuming your pie, you can legally murder him and no court in the land would convict you, because he violated the pie code.

It's funny to me how people turn into such NIMBYs when it comes to talking to their neighbors about things they should talk to their neighbors about. Everyone seems to like the idea of intra-community communication, like it's some idyllic fantasy of bygone pre-internet times that they reserve for other buildings and blocks not their own. But when it comes to sacrificing their own personal dignity and privacy and, I don't know, revealing potentially embarrassing habits about themselves or something, people tend to clam up and build these mysterious little cold wars of fear and resentment.

mysterious little cold wars of fear and resentment.

*new personal board description*

i've had two interactions with him so far, so this wouldn't be the first. when we met, i asked his name, and he answered with my name. so i said, "with an h or a k?" and answered correctly, so i said "i'm glad we're on the same page." we both shared the little laugh that is made one someone says something completely wrong and it isn't otherwise acknowledged. a day went by, during which my dog kept barking at him as he passed by our door on the way up to the third floor. the next time my dog boofed at the door, i opened it and asked him if he would mind saying hello to my dog really quick. which, again, sounds terrible as i write this, but it was kind of normal at the time, and i just wanted my dog Bird, the greatest dog of all time, to meet him so that she wouldn't boof at him all the time. she loves everyone and she doesn't boof at people she's met. they said hello for a bit, and then after a short time i thanked him and he said bye to Bird, the greatest dog of all time.

so we're on pretty good terms, i think, other than the potential homicide which may or may not happen but could be justified due to the "After midnight" violation

get each person alone. "you sound really good. But...the other guy is dead weight, just holding you back. it's time to strike out on your own, post solo videogame theme music covers to youtube. etc." plant the seed of discontent. then let the nitrous oxide you pipe in through their ventilation do its work. or maybe think about doing all that while you hit the ceiling with a broom.

never acknowledge the broom. if they bring it up, challenge them to even find a broom in your apartment. follow up with a double length broom session.

"i need to speak to you. to each of you. alone. each of you, alone."

My advice: record them (aim for best fidelity) and then play said recoring back loudly at weird hours when you know they are home. I did this once and it worked (well, I think headphones were plugged into the amp).

I once turned the speakers back to face the wall, hit play on "The Piña Colada Song (Escape)", turned it to 10 and walked out the door to work.

Dude never kept me up again, though I'm surprised my door wasn't kicked down when I came home.

the musical apple pie approach

can i pay someone $35 to do this for me? i will tip

would gladly do this, i am not afraid of this conversation at all

i had a neighbor issue yesterday also related to practicing an instrument! i went downstairs to practice (basement) and my dog started barking like crazy. i forgot my water upstairs, so i went back up to see what was going on and get him to stop barking. then i heard a woman screaming for help.

looked out the window and one of my neighbors in the apt building next door was face down on the pavement and yelling for help. another neighbor heard her too and came out, i got the face-down lady a towel and a chair, and we negotiated with her about calling an ambulance. it was really stressful. but eventually she got the care she needed and the neighbors were gathered outside complaining about the step she tripped on.

meanwhile, i went back inside to my home and i couldn't bring myself to practice because they were *right there* and i didn't feel it was appropriate or kind or respectful to start playing loud music. it was nbd, i lost a day of practice and became acutely aware of the remaining degree of self-consciousness i have wrt playing. something, Karl's neighbors seem to lack!

anyway i would talk to these people for you if you want. i have to have difficult conversations with people all the time for work, it's part of my skill set at this point maybe?

omg, that's some real neighbor trouble there! glad that she's ok, it sounds like (?)

i was joking about paying someone to do it :) it's not something i look forward to, but it's on me to do.

That's some balls to practice the sax in an apartment building.

Have you mentioned how long the flat was empty before you moved in?
Couldn't be that this person simply hasn't realised what effect he's having on your living set up because they had either nobody there or somebody not hearing it.

That's some balls to practice the sax in an apartment building.

― Yerac, Tuesday, September 3, 2019 7:53 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8-i7lA5gic

2 types of ppl in the world:
those who hate both confrontation and being another's annoyance and so during the rare occasion they throw caution to the wind and play music relatively loudly for a short duration during reasonable time of day, they feel guilty about it and hope it doesn't result in confrontation w/neighbor
those who depend on the fact that most ppl hate confrontation and so they'll basically dare anyone to curb the whims of their id

I am not getting over the electric guitar/saxophone duets

Karl needs to get a calliope and be a team player instead of a complainer.

"So, I heard you guys practicing at weird times during the day and night and, well... I have this glockenspiel, see, and..."

Uh-oh, time for someone to update Candy Dulfer and David A. Stewart - "Lily Was Here" !

. I think your best bet is to just focus on the nighttime noise and say please, I really needs my sleep, no rockin' after 11PM.

Yeah ... it could be that because it was a 3 day weekend, they were jamming later than usual? ... maybe frame the conversation with that in mind? Considering you just moved in, this might not be their "regular schedule"?

Some new neighbors recently moved into the apartment upstairs from mine. The few times I've encountered them, they seemed friendly enough. Anyway, they occasionally make these *ridiculously* loud thudding sounds. It's not loud walking, or sex. It sounds like they're repeatedly elbow-dropping the floor, or picking up and dropping giant sacks of potatoes, or something. This usually goes on for just a couple of minutes, and only during the daytime. Given that, and given that I'm the least confrontational person on earth, I'm inclined to ignore it, but it is so annoying and so baffling that every time it happens I am tempted to go knock on their door and ask, "is everything OK?"

xps at KM: my brain is kind of fried today and I was thinking "Karl, spelled correctly with a H and not a K"

btw your name is Harl, now

xp I had that happen and likewise ignored it cause it was just for short durations. But then my ceiling was literally shaking along with the loud booms. Turns out it was a couple just out of college who were doing synchronized workouts together. Cause sure why not have 350lbs jumping up and down for 10 minutes straight when you're in the upstairs unit of a shoddily-built, aging apartment building.