Noisy Neighbours

[Ladskater]

Noisy Neighbours

I live in an apt. and up until now it has been relatively quiet. Considering I am in the family builiding and do here the odd child. However, lately I have had noise of a different sort - from a stereo. You know the thump, thump, thump noise - steady and loud! I could even here it in the parking lot the other day. I have complained to my landlords, but so far not much has resulted from that. Anyone else deal with sort of problem? What did you do? Other than moving, which is not a bad idea - I don't know what I can do.

Ladskater

 

[sk8tngcanuck]

Noisy Neighbours

Ladskater,

I too had the misfortune of noisy neighbours. I am almost ashamed to repeat what I did as it seems so juvenile now, but I was at my witts end. The nasty offenders lived directly above us, and as we loved the location and the apartment itself, we were not willing to abandon it merely because of offensive neighbours. I tried speaking to the landlord, with no result, so took things into my own hands.

What I did to finally get my point accross, is I would sit in wait late into the night. Once the neighbours had been quiet for aprox 15 minutes (just long enough to doze off) I would break out the broom, and I would incessantly beat the end of it against my ceiling (their floor) to whatever tune tickled my fancy at that particular moment.

Needless to say after 4 nights, they got the hint and things were much quieter from that point on!

 

[Ladskater]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

sk8tngcanuck:

Sounds like that worked for you. You are braver than me. These are a bunch of young guys with a noisy stereo. I did blast my stereo briefly the other day. I don't know if it made any difference. I am thinking of getting up really early - I am up around 7:00 am anyway and making extra noise - before I leave for work. I am getting deseperate. Thanks for the response.

Ladskater

 

[Dee4707]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Ladskater, I feel for you. I live in an apartment too and at various times been bothered with music blasting. Once, the music was so loud that my walls were vibrating, can you believe it. I had commented to my landlord about the noise and he said to call the police and let them handle it. He said if the music is so loud that it's vibrating your walls then it's disturbing the peace.

Where I draw the line is when I have to get up early to go to work. On the weekends I don't make such an issue because I don't have to get up early.

A couple of friends said they were going thru the same thing and the people lived adjacent to their apartment. They, like the other poster, would either get up early in the morning or wait until very late at night and put their speakers up against the wall and turn the music on full blast. The neighbors got the hint and my friends didn't have any more trouble.

I just don't understand how people can be so inconsiderate.

Dee

 

[Kara Bear]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Heres my bad neighbor story.
My neighbors downstairs work nights, something like 10 till 4am. But on their days off, they are up all night. So at one oclock we can hear dude beneath us playing his guitar, drums, and/or singing. They also have a stereo witth lots of bass. They tend to do this during the day as well. My boyfriend goes to work early but I spend most of the day at home doing schoolwork, so I basically have to work around their schedule of music playing. One day last December I was studying for exams and they had the music so loud things in my apartment were shaking. After several hours, I was developing a headache and out of frustration banged on the floor. Well, two minutes later, theres knock on my door. Its the downstairs guys. And they look touch. Anyways, she fires into me about being loud when we get up at in the morning at 7 and how we dare bang at them. And every second word she said was the f word. Not very nice. So little me who doesn't like confrontation, nods and says I'll try to be quieter. Then I close the door and start crying. Having someone come into your home and swear at you is not nice. We went to our landlord after I had calmed down and found out they had already been there complaining about us getting up at 7am. I told they landlord what they had said to me but nothing changed. They still play their music mega loud but now I live in fear that if I make noise they're going to come up here and beat me up. They are a touch looking couple!!!

Anyways, it feels good to get that off my chest. Needless to say, I totally understand with everyone else's situation. I comfort myself by imagining the day when we move out. There are going to be a lot of heavy boxes dropped that morning. If anyone has any plans on how to get revenge on evil neighbors, that would be great.

 

[Pookie]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

I've never lived in an apartment. But I did have a neighbor that was kind enough to buy their son a go-kart. Needless to say it was like living next door to a race track. The kid always had excellent timing. He knew just when one of our babies or one of us was going to take a nap.

 

[Jules Asner]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Landlords don't care. If they are blasting music after 11 pm I'd call the police because they are disturbing not only you, but probably a lot of people around you. Don't tell them you're calling the police, just call and do it anonymously if possible. Call and report them everytime they have pounding music on. They can't report you to the police for making some noise while you get ready for work in the morning.

My mother had a problem like this and she eventually moved because of it. The landlady was a jerk and didn't care. All the other people on the block were also complaining and the landlady ignored everyone and was very rude about it.

She got hers though -- when the losers above moved out they didn't tell her, stole most of the furniture (it was a furnished apartment) and ruined anything that was left behind. The carpet (which was new) was completely destroyed, they had painted one room black and they left garbage, empty beer cans and any other gross thing you can imagine. Since they couldn't take the sofa, they stole the cushions and to top things off they left all the lights on, left the windows wide open and just moved out and never told her. Me and my mother went upstairs to investigate because you could see from outside that there was nobody there and that they had left everything on and open. We turned off the lights and locked everything because anyone could have climbed in and then robbed my parents. Idiot landlady that she was, she then got a similar group to live upstairs again and it was more of the same - she always rented to young groups of europeans who were out for a few months working and they were all pretty bad - pounding "rave" music all night, lots of drugs and drunkeness and they were really rude.
they were always losing their keys and would ring my parents bell at 3 or 4 am almost everynight to let them in.

My mother went up one night to ask them to please turn the music down and she was knocking for a long time, finally a guy came out who had obviously been passed out and he yelled at her (using lots of colorful language) because SHE woke HIM up (if you can believe that).


Anyway...
You might want to start looking at the classified ads. It might be a blessing in disguise. About 3 weeks after my parents moved the pipes froze and burst in the noisy people building and the entire place was flooded and the girls who moved in after them had all of their furniture and things ruined and the landlady blamed them (although obviously it wasn't their fault since the pipes are not their responsibility).

Another bit of advice - don't answer the door if they come up to yell at you again in a threatening way - call the police if need be and if you ever really feel threatened by them you could file a restraining order. They don't sound very nice.
Obviously anyone that is that inconsiderate is probably a dipsh*t and you don't know what else they might do so be careful but don't be scared to stand up for yourself just do it in a way that you have it on record everytime they do something make sure it is reported.

 

[Jules Asner]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

PS KARA - if you just want to do something in the meantime while you are looking for a place, send one of them an anonymous package every month -- put a typed letter saying something like "As a friend I just wanted you to know that you have really bad breath, I didn't know how to tell you in person but you really need to do something about it." and then include some toothpaste and a toothbrush. Or you could write something like "Times are tough, but body odor should be a priority. I understand, what with your horrible personality, it may be hard to keep a steady job, so I hope you will accept (and use) this gift of soap which I am enclosing. You really smell bad, please take a bath"
OK, so its immature, but oh so fun and hey, they sound like they deserve it.

I actually sent something like this to a real friend of mine just as a joke. She was freaking out but was pretty sure it was me and I couldn't keep a straight face so the joke only lasted about 15 minutes.

 

[sk8tngcanuck]

Noisy Neighbours

Hi again Ladskter

In regards to calling police, another option to explore is contacting your City Hall and checking to see if there are noise bylaws. When I lived in Kamloops, there was a bylaw in regards to disruptive and excessive noise between the hours of 11 pm and 8 am. A violator could be fined up to $250.00. I believe the first complaint was a written warning to the offender and the second incidence was a fine. I say hit them where it hurts, right in the pocketbook!

 

[Ladskater]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Thanks folks! I got a chuckle out of your stories. I guess everyone has experienced this from time to time. My answer may lie in moving - my mom is moving to another apt. building so I may take over her suite. As someone said it maybe a "blessing in disguise." I have needed a good reason to move out of here for quite sometime. Maybe this is it.

Ladskater

 

[schmooze1]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

I don't have to deal with noisey neighbours but I did have to deal with very inconsiderate housemates! I share a student house with several people and a while back we had a group of nurses staying - they were the worst!

They used to take over all the bathrooms so they could wash their clothes in the bath (there is a laundry room in the house), they never cleaned up after themselves in the kitchen and also used everybody elses stuff and didn't clean that up.
They were always forgetting their keys and ringing the doorbell at all hours of day and night to be let in. The worst was one night about 3am the doorbell was ringing and ringing. Eventually I got up to answer it and it was one of the nurses and she was like what took you so long - I've been standing in the freezing cold for 20 minutes and I am wrecked after work. No thank you, or sorry for waking you or anything!!! And all the time her keys were somewhere in her bag but she couldn't be bothered to find them! Agghhhh!!!

 

[dlksk8fan]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

I just hate inconsiderate people. When you live in a apartment you need to be considerate of the other people that are there!!!!! If you want to make noise live out in the country where your nearest neighbor is a mile away.

When I was nine months pregnant with my first son, my husband and I lived in a condo. The guy above us would play his stereo really <span style="color:red;font-family:times new roman;font-size:medium;">loud</span>. This would go on for hours. We would knock on his door and call him but he wouldn't answer. We could hear our phone message and then hear him play it back, so we knew he was there!! We even called the police on him and he still continued to play his music loud. Now we owned our condos so there was no landlord to call. So my husband one night out of frustration took our coat rack and started pounding on the ceiling with it. I'm sitting on our couch, ready to give birth any moment and yelling at my husband to stop because he was going to put a big hole in the ceilinng. No sooner did I say that then my husband did just that. Well we had to pay for the repair and a few months down the road we ended up buying a house and moving. That solved the problem.

 

[megsk8z]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

I wish someone would invent a sonic stun gun so a person could just point it at the thing making too much noise and it would automatically stop making noise for about a minute. I would find this especially helpful in the case of those stereos that boom on past my house at all hours.
I've been through noisy neighbors, lots and lots of them and I really feel for you because usually if a person is inconsiderate enough to make that much noise, they are not responsive to suggestions about keeping the noise down.
The only success story I can relate is the one about the barking dog that lives 2 houses down. These people used to leave the dog out at all (and I do mean all) hours of the night. The dog would bark constantly; I timed him once and he kept it up for 3 hours. I don't blame the dog, so I sent him a sympathy card (addressed to The Barking Dog at.....) telling him that he must feel terrible to be outside all the time or perhaps he was ill; either way, I was concerned for his well-being and if his owners didn't care enough to keep him inside and comfortable, well then perhaps it would be time to call the Anti-Cruelty Society to be sure that he was being taken care of properly. I am happy to report complete success with this strategy; I only wish it worked so well on people.

 

[heyang]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Well, I don't have noisy neighbors. I've got train tracks across the street - that doesn't bother me because the trains don't run very late and it's quick. What bugs me is the physical plant on the other side of the trucks. Sometimes they are running their machinery, clanking away at something and testing horns - they've done this as late as 2AM. I can deal with it when the windows are closed, but that means I can't open the windows at night. I have yet to find out who to contact about this situation - especially since it isn't every day.

I used to live in an apartment, too. One night, the guy downstairs came home and turned on his stereo. The volume wasn't loud, but the bass was turned up. You could feel the music, but not hear it. Fortunately,he only had it on for about 1/2 an hour, but I was gritting my teeth the entire time which doesn't help you to relax to sleep. One time only - maybe one of the other neighbors said something to him

I llike the gag mail idea. I'd also check on what the police can do.

 

[SNOBOL]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Forget about the police, there is nothing they can do. I had to call the police several times regarding my noisy neighbors. Sometimes the neighbors would crank it up after the cops were gone. Finally, the cops admitted to me there was nothing they could do. They suggested that I taped the music and documented the date/time and took my neighbors to small-claims court. For the sake of my sanity, I moved out!

Edited for typos.

 

[Kzarah]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

We are in the process of moving this week end because of noisey neighbors. All of your complaint pale in comparasion. I can't give you a whole lot of details right now. I have to take another load over to the new house.
Daniel St. Julian

 

[rgirl181]

Re: Re: Noisy Neighbours

I'm so sorry, Kzarah! Poor Lulu. I know my Pi hated loud noise, especially unexpected ones.
Rgirl

 

[Ladskater]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

I think the best solution for me is a move - period. I am tired of this place anyway. A change would be great. It turns out, my mom is moving so her place would be available and it is bigger than this apt. plus the building is nicer and it is quiter. So a whole lot of pluses to move! The only thing that is holding me back is the <em>thought</em> of having to pack - I have so much stuff! It's also expensive to move. It sure would be great to get out of here though.

Ladskater

 

[schmooze1]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

Well I went to have a look at a house my friends and I are thinking about moving into. The house itself looks really nice but the house next door has been demolished and is in the process of being rebuilt!!
I think I can safely say I am going to have noisy neighbours if I move in there

 

[Skate Sandee]

Re: Noisy Neighbours

No advice, but wanted to share my story. In college I lived in a 2-family apartment. The woman who lived above me had her bedroom directly above mine. She snored SO LOUDLY that I could hear her as if she were IN my room. Once I fixated on the snoring, I couldn't block it out!!

I ended crank calling her (this was before the days of *69) so that she'd wake up. I'd hang up as soon as she picked up the phone, and then figured I had about 10 minutes to fall into a deep enough sleep before she started up again!

Fortunately she was only there one semester. But boy - I lost a LOT of sleep!