Living beside tradesmen advice

dragilex

I'm hoping for some advice and thoughts. I'm currently in the process of buying a house and it has recently come to light that there are 2 businesses registered at the adjacent property. An electrical company and a one-man joiner. Both with vans. One even sponsors local football team. The houses themselves are quite private, have driveways, big hedge between them.

There is the worry that the coming and going of the vans and all associated busyness of a business will cause a disturbance.

Does anyone have any experience of living next door to a tradesman? How is it?

Is anyone a tradesman? Is there much noise when going about your work when you're at home, coming and going from home?

Or is this worry about nothing?

Thanks in advance

pinkteapot

In general I wouldn't worry - tradesmen don't tend to have customers coming to their house - they go to the customers, so there isn't really noise at home. What sort of noise were you thinking of? It's different to say a self-employed financial adviser who might have clients coming to appointments every hour at their home office.

That should be the case for the electrician, but joinery might be different - are they building wooden units/furniture at home and then taking it to customers? That could create noise (depending on where they do the work - garage/outbuilding or in the house).

In my experience tradesmen don't come and go any more than the average person - they'll tend to go out for a day's work and then maybe again in the evening to do some quotes. A normal van (transit type) isn't much noisier than a diesel car.

You could knock on other neighbours' doors and ask the more general question of whether it's a quiet street.

One issue may be parking - if they have a couple of business vans and also family cars, do they street park some of their vehicles and is it a street where that would be a problem?

DaftyDuck

Tradesmen, especially good ones, are like gold dust. If the houses are private, having a joiner and a 'leccy as neighbours wouldn't trouble me in the slightest.

Of course, one may have drumming as a hobby, the other tuning his motorcycle collection at night.... but their profession doesn't deter me a bit!

LEJC

I would be looking at it as a potential positive....think of the mates rates or the access you will have to quality tools should you need to borrow any.....

tbh,many people now bring their work vans home so its quite accepted that they park on street...the types of professions you describe are not usually out of hours so it should have minimal impact on your quiet enjoyment.

dragilex

These are good comments. Please keep them coming.

PlutoinCapricorn

There is being home-based, and there is using the home address as a trading address but doing most of the work in clients' homes or somewhere else away from home.

For home-based people, the issue is whether or not they are doing anything that neighbours would consider a nuisance: noise, delivery vans and clients taking up parking spaces for example. There may also be health & safety and security concerns: are they storing hazardous materials or inviting any old members of the public into a secure community?

pinkteapot

p.s. After seeing your other thread re survey findings, check that these tradesmen haven't been doing repairs on the house before employing them yourself.

Gillybean

My husband is a tradesman and he's never flippin at home!

maninthestreet

Have you tried knocking on a few doors in the street and ask the occupiers if they've had any problems related to these businesses?

DaftyDuck

Of course, Hyacinth [STRIKE]Bucket [/STRIKE]Bouquet would shudder at having tradesmen next door.

Entrepreneurial small business managing executives sounds so much better......

Bart1

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Of course, Hyacinth [STRIKE]Bucket [/STRIKE]Bouquet would shudder at having tradesmen next door.

Entrepreneurial small business managing executives sounds so much better......

I'm a professional relocation engineer.......


AKA Taxi driver