Neighbour Noise

[Themis]

We live in a 2nd floor flat and our downstairs neighbours knocked on our door at 9.15am on Saturday to complain that our vacuuming had woken her up. Apparently, we wake her up every weekend by vacuuming too early. Now vacuuming is my DH's job and I wish I did live in this alternate universe where he is doing it at 9am every Saturday. Unfortunately, in the real world I am usually still nagging him on Sunday afternoon to get it done. I think she is either exaggerating or getting confused with the noise of our washer/dryer.

The neighbour who complained is one I have moaned about on here before. She is Spanish and seems to only be able to shout rather than talk at a normal volume. So when she knocked on our door, my DH and I took it as an opportunity to tell her that her and her flatmates disturb us late into the night regularly. At first she tried to deny that they were ever loud, but then when I told her that they regularly laugh, shriek and shout until midnite or later she told me that she didn't consider midnite to be late, since if she goes to bed around then she is still getting her 7 hours of sleep before she needs to get up. Well thats ok then, as long as she is getting the sleep she needs! My DH told her that if she went to bed earlier she would be able to get up earlier and so wouldn't be annoyed by us vacuuming at 9am. We left it that we would wait until 10am on weekends to vacuum, and that she would try to keep the noise down. Of course, yesterday evening they were louder than ever but only until 11pm or thereabouts!



So, it has got me wondering what Damsels opinions were on what time they feel is reasonable to make noise that may disturb neighbours?

[joanne62]

We contacted the council for advice and was told normal household noise was acceptable between 7am and 9pm.

[Dink]

Well, I think she is being just a touch egocentric. I would say it is socially acceptable to vacuum at 8am. 7am may be legal, but I think many people would be asleep at 7 if they could. By around 8am I would expect most people have begun their day, or at least enough people that I think it fair if someone needs to do things that make noise.

[Dink]

As well, since I am bashing this woman already, they are making noise way too late imho. I think quiet time should begin around 8 or 9 normally. Personally, I wouldn't be overly bothered if occasionally the noise went a few hours later, as long as it wasn't always like that.

[Amyb]

Oh Themis, my heart feels for you. We have just had 4 years of Spanish tennants in the flat above us. First students ( we got them evicted) and then 2 lots of young professionals. The last one moved out in April & it's like living in a different flat!

In our experience Spanish speak very very loudly, cook dinner at 10pm at night and have alot of family to stay! Sounds like you have tried to compromise. Not sure what else to suggest- are you above them? Surely they will have more impact noise as opposed to ambient noise?

[Samba]

Well it sounds like you may be reaching a good compromise, so fingers crossed for you.

I think its just the problem with living in flats or attached houses. Not ideal, but just the way it is.

[Themis]

We are above them so I expect that they hear us walking around etc. We are pretty quiet though, rarely have people over and I'm usually in bed by about 10.30pm. That's when it gets particularly annoying to have them shouting downstairs, it almost feels as though its coming right through the mattress.

We never vacuum before lunchtime usually though so I can only think its our washing machine that they hear. Although I must admit that on 2 occasions I have vacuumed at about 10am on a Sunday morning to get my own back on them if they have been particularly noisy the night before.

There was one occasion where they being really loud until around 1am before they headed out. They then came home at around 5am and were extremely loud crashing around, laughing, shouting etc until they decided to go to bed. I could not get back to sleep so felt like shite the next day. I may have needed to vacuum very, very carefully and slowly the next morning.