What do you do about noisy neighbors?

[Fran Kubelik]

We live in a college town, but our neighborhood is a few blocks past the edge of the student slums. Our neighborhood is almost entirely single family homes, and we paid a premium to live within walking distance of downtown.
There are two houses across the street that have been converted to multiple apartments. Until this semester, we've been incredibly lucky with the tenants. Partying students usually prefer to live, well, near other partying students. But this fall the house across the street was taken over by very noisy partiers...one of whom is a very bad, very noisy drummer.

I am often woken up in the middle of the night by loud voices. The drummer, despite practicing day and night WITH THE WINDOWS OPEN, doesn't seem to be getting any better.

What would you do?

[auntAgonist]

1. Do you think they would be receptive

if you just went over and talked to them? Either that or join in on midnight jam sessions :rofl:

I hope you can work it out.

:)

aA

[Fran Kubelik]

5. Ah yes, I just tried that.

And they wouldn't come to the door. They had just finished pounding on the drums about 90 seconds before I rang the doorbell and knocked. I am nearly certain they saw me coming and thought they could just pretend they weren't home. Oh well. I was just going to ask if they could please close the windows.

[philosophie_en_rose]

2. Call the police.

Or write a letter to that building's owner.

[billyskank]

3. Make tons of noise during the day when THEY're asleep.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. My dear Fran Kubelik...

This is always a tough question...

Most people would say, start by talking to him...

I dunno, though.

He might be approachable, but then again, maybe not...

There's always the line: call the cops.

We've done both...

But in our neighborhood, talking to the offending party seems to work the best.


Or maybe offer him a coupon for drum lessons? :hide:

[Fran Kubelik]

6. auntAgonist just suggested the same thing above

I tried...they didn't come to the door. I guess the next 2 am wake-up call will result in a call to the police. I hate to do that though. It's always better to be on friendly terms with one's neighbors.

[ThatsMyBarack]

7. I have wireless earphones plugged into my teevee!

The headset is the kind that covers and hugs your ears completely. ;)

[GOPisEvil]

8. I have the best noisy neighbors ever.

There's a new band practicing in the garage next door. They started a few weeks ago. To their credit, they keep the door closed (in this heat - wow). And, they sound pretty decent. Anyway, I went over there at 10:30pm on a Sunday a couple of weeks ago, and they were very apologetic and nice, and stopped immediately. Then, last week, their singer stopped by and apologized. She said she and the bad were going to put up insulation in the garage to deaden the sound. And we agreed that on work nights, they would not play past 10:30. Last week they practiced for a bit and I could barely hear them.

So, good luck with your new neighbors. I lucked out big time.

[Fran Kubelik]

17. So I talked to a neighbor who was walking her dog this evening...

I guess another neighbor, also a drummer, has been over to talk to them and offered a lot of advice on how not to piss off the neighbors. :) He was well-received, tho it appears they haven't taken his advice to heart. I'm going to go talk to the grown-up (soundproofed!) neighbor drummer at the block party this weekend to see if he might talk to the student drummer again.

[OmahaBlueDog]

9. Depends on the noise

If it's most noise.. I ask nicely ONCE. After that, I call the cops.

If it's noisy lovemaking... I do nothing whatsoever ;-)

[DeepBlueC]

10. tell him he needs to use a practice pad

until he gets good enough to rent a rehearsal hall. Or he needs to install soundproofing on his own premises. You can try to come to an accommodation offering him windows of time when drumming would not bother you personally (although you can't vouch for other neighbors..so it likely would be never). He has to make the adjustments. After you have made your concerns known, ask him to use practice pads only until he completes soundproofing. After that, maybe one more visit to ask why he hasn't availed himself of your suggestions or any of his own that would accomplish the same purpose. Then, the cops.

[Gormy Cuss]

11. Try the door again, but this time leave a polite note requesting some consideration.

Explain that sound travels quite well in the neighborhood especially when the windows are open or later in the evening when everything else is quiet, and suggest that they may want to invest in some soundproofing to accommodate their at-home practice without sharing the sound with the whole neighborhood.

You may need to tolerate the loud voices and some drum banging noise if the neighbors actually do make the effort to minimize it. When I lived in Boston I had good, reasonable neighbors all but one year, and that year the students made a habit of hanging out on the back porch until all hours of the night and talking with the car idling in the driveway right outside of my bedroom window, until the night I opened the window wide and suggested that they either shut off the car and lower their voices or move the conversation inside since I couldn't move my bed to another room. I was nice about it and they were actually surprised that they were bothering anyone -- it never happened again.

[Fran Kubelik]

16. All excellent advice, thanks!

[1gobluedem]

12. Mow your lawn at 6 a.m.

With a very noisy gas-powered mower. Then cut wood with a chainsaw right under their windows. When they come out to complain, offer to make a deal.

[lizerdbits]

13. Similar to what I was dealing with

I banged on the door several times which worked for about 48 hours. Once they were so loud they couldn't hear me banging on the door so I called the police. The tennant at the time (these are TH condos but the owner can rent them out) said he was a bartender and was forming a bar band. I don't care, I have a day job so playing bongo drums and bass guitar at 2:00am is not acceptable, just like knowing they have night jobs means I wouldn't be loud at 10:00am if I was home and if I played an instrument. I later knocked on the door in the middle of the night and called the police multiple times which again lasted about 48 hours. What really helped was going to the condo association who sent the owners a letter and the manager actually showed up at their door to discuss the problem. Since this unit is rented, my going over there and calling the police may not have made it to the owners as the letter probably did. If you have an HOA maybe you should talk to them, though it sounds like that may not be the case. Also look into your local noise ordinances as I did before the manager showing up made a difference. I asked a random police officer I saw at a gas station when filling up about the laws and he said I could have them fined but I'd have to go to court to do so. However he said the judge would listen to me more than the responding officer.

The difference here is that I had suspicions that there was some drug activity occurring with my neighbors- 1) being in bed one night hearing someone in that unit tell 'Phil' he had 20 minutes to come up with his $2500 debt or he was getting his throat ripped out, and 2) moving my mattress into my second bedroom which overlooks the street and being woken up not by music but by the outside activity involving the numerous vehicles that stopped by for 5 minutes during the night. There is also a different person answering the door every time I go over there so the residents change every month or so when the association says the leases have to be for 1 year (each one telling me they moved in recently and too many for that size unit to be different roommates). When I talked to the officer I mentioned the bar the neighbor I talked to said he worked at and he said there were several employees there who were suspected of illegal activities who seemed to vanish when they found out they were being 'observed.'

So keep calling police, ask about noise ordinances, and talk to an HOA if you have one.

[ironflange]

14. Put them on this site

http://www.rottenneighbor.com

It may not solve anything, but it lets you vent a little steam.

[mainegreen]

15. Call the cops non-stop until they become legally marked as a nuisance house.

That usually does the trick.

[harmonicon]

18. call the cops - every time you think the noise is out of hand

That's about all you can do. If they aren't being so loud as to violate a noise ordinance, campaign to have one passed in your community.

[dropkickpa]

19. My upstairs neighbors

Are young college kids. I pretty much don't care, as they are rarely around and me and Dropkid are VERY noisy (good thing the neighbors to either sode of us are elderly and nearly deaf), but, on time, they decided to have a party on Sunday night and I was that old grumpy neioghbor who went out and complained to them at 3am (any other night of the week I wouldn't have cared, but i hate monday morning enough as it is).

I would go over and ask them if they could keep it down at night. It never hurts to ask, and you may be sur[rised by their responsiveness if you approach them in a civil manner.