Rubbish neighbours on both sides

JIL

MaxTheCat wrote: »

You laugh at the idea of stopping someone smoking in their own home but in New South Wales people have been made to stop smoking in their own apartments because the smoke drifts into other peoples apartments causing health issues and annoyance. So if it can happen there then it can happen here and with luck will do.

I would love it to happen here. I have never smoked and unfortunately got throat cancer 4 years ago. The treatment I went through was awful.
Two years ago my next door neighbour moved out of the house attached to us, a semi. He rented the house out to six adults but he stipulated they weren't allowed to smoke in the house.
So they erected a canopy above the patio door. All six of them roll their own cigarettes and are out there all hours of the day. Because of the canopy the smoke doesn't go straight into the air it wafts into our garden and into our house if the windows are open. Our house stinks of fags.
I would swap this for your throat clearing neighbour. There's so much worse out there.

GwylimT

I cough a lot during the night due to my asthma, so if you were living next to me I would advise you to wear ear plugs and be thankful that unlike me you can actually have a full nights sleep, or work on a cure.

warehouse

marleyboy wrote: »

Have you considered building yourself a log cabin deep in the middle of a forest, allowing the rest of the population to get on with their lives?

That sounds absolutely perfect to me and if I could do that for the rest of my life then I would.

theEnd

In some sympathy to the OP, I have a guy next to me at work who spends all day everyday hacking and blowing his nose. Often he makes his nose bleed. Some kind of tourrettes (sp?).

It's very, very annoying. But I think I just have to put up with it.

Errata

What's the world coming too if you can't cough your lungs up in your own home without the next door neighbour narking on at you about it.

pinkteapot

If the throat-clearing is a nervous tic, all you'll have done by mentioning it is make it worse. Leave the poor man alone.

maas

Im trying to think how I'd react if I had a bad throat (smokers cough) and coughed fairly regularly, and my neighbour knocked at my door asking me to stop coughing....

Errata

maas wrote: »

Im trying to think how I'd react if I had a bad throat (smokers cough) and coughed fairly regularly, and my neighbour knocked at my door asking me to stop coughing....

I'd think they were totally bonkers and ignore them.

Bean83

I do have some sympathy with the OP - we used to have a neighbour who went to the pub every night without fail, and he would come in at about midnight and wake us up with his coughing. The noise was horrendous, it would go on for about 10-20 minutes at a time and woke us up every single night.


However, we accepted there was nothing we could do about it (I can't imagine he'd have taken too kindly to being asked not to cough in his own home!) so we just put with it until we could move out. Luckily for us, we were only renting so weren't stuck there indefinitely!

TBagpuss

OK, I get that it is annoying, but in erms of your neighbour with a cough, that is just your, and his, bad luck. He is not behaving in a way which is antisocial or inconsiderate.

It sounds as though your home has poor sound insulation and you can look at ways to improve that - minor things such as moving which wall your bed is against, having (full) bookshelves or wardrobes on the party wall, and having carpet rather than hard flooring may all help (depending on how the sound is travelling)

I believe that you can get sound insulating board which could be fixed to the walls.

You may find that wearing earplugs, or using a white noise generator helps.

There are several free white noise apps which you can download and try if you have a smart phone, so you can give it a try without having to spend anything in the first instance.


In terms of the noisy neighbours, if they are making excessive noise into the small hours then it is worth contacting your local environmental protection team - however, whether they can help will depend on how noisy the neighbours are and whether, objectively, the noise is enough to be considered a nuisance.