Noisy, selfish neighbour in above flat. Please help.

sniggings

Red_Spider wrote: »

But only if you're in the flat, putting in effort...

You can put loud music on timer and go away somewhere, so less effort on your part. Plus it creates confusion as to whether you are in or not. (Put lights on timer also).

So the chap upstairs may be dragging his furniture around for no reason...

you are missing the point, all those thing both top and bottom flats can do, ut the top also can stomp around the flat and drag things acrosss the floor, which they can do without any effort at all.

And those things can not e classed as a nuisance.

Crashy_Time

Roki21 wrote: »

Hi,

I'm at my wits end at the moment so just hoping someone can offer a glimmer of hope or advise.

Basically, we have lived in our current property for a few years. The first year and a half or so was fine, the lady above was nice and we never had any issues with noise - she used to do workout DVDs so would hear skipping and jumping for half an hour or so a night but that wasn't a problem -you can allow for half an hour or so and it wasn't disruptive enough to be bothered about. Obviously you expect footsteps, doors closing etc. which is fine and we were okay with that.

She sadly sold the house just over a year ago to what I can only describe as the most disgusting, selfish idiot I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.

He has bongos, guitars, keyboards, every kind of instrument that you can imagine in his flat. Classes himself as a 'musician' (not sure why as he is awful) so is constantly playing guitar and singing (extremely loudly and badly up until 11pm at night). He smokes weed, the smell infiltrating our bedroom if we have the window open as he smokes it out of his bedroom window. He also has a "huge hi-fi system" with speakers placed all over his living room and has not had any soundproofing done so all of his noise carries through into our flat (his living room is above ours). We spoke to him on numerous occasions, being polite and asking him to turn the music down - this was every single night from 6pm until 11pm on the nose. He said that he couldn't turn his music any lower as he wouldn't be able to hear it or enjoy it even though it was so loud that you could hear it in the hallway downstairs. Yet when it hits 11pm, he can turn it down to a reasonable level and hears it perfectly fine!

I've had MPs involved, escalated throughout the Council, and no one is willing to help. Are we in the wrong here? I feel like I am the one who is out of order and no one is willing to help. I would love to move to get away from this reprobate but given the cost of renting somewhere new - it is £1k just to move out - my partner and I have no option but to be stuck here.

Has anyone had any success going down any other routes? Are there any other routes I can explore given the fact that we can't really afford to move yet? Surely if he has all these instruments and massive music systems, he needs to have the flat soundproofed? It isn't normal behaviour for someone living in a flat so surely he needs to adjust his flat to suit his lifestyle?

Please help if you can.

Basically you need to suss out when he sleeps, and make sure that this becomes impossible for him (hoovering, washing machines, your own music, loud TV, impromptu "DIY" (just bang a hammer on something metallic for an hour or so in time to your music) etc. etc. If he smokes weed and plays music `til 4am most nights he probably won`t like hearing you hoover at 7am too much? It is psychological warfare, he must learn that you are the dominant force.

nkkingston

The gap between the flats may well be amplifying the noise, rather than deadening it. My in laws have a flat above a shop which installed speakers in their ceiling to soothe their customers; the net result was that the music was louder in the flat than it was in the shop.

My only advice is not to get into a war of sounds with him. As others have said, top floor flats win that round, and you might !!!! off the neighbours below. He's being selfish, but it doesn't sound like he's being actively aggressive with the noise. Adjust your environment to make sure you can enjoy your own music/tv/conversation etc, but don't try and out shout him.