Noisy renovations, how much warning or notice would you give, if any?

pigpen

duchy wrote: »

Must admit I'd be less than thrilled if my neighbours were doing DIY til 1am for three weeks - whether I was a student or not would be irrelevant -although if I was trying to study I think I'd be even less impressed.

Frankly working til that hour for weeks just sounds completely selfish and inconsiderate and you were probably quite fortunate no-one complained to the council.

How big is your kitchen that it took three weeks working til 1 am to get it all done....or were you only working on it during anti-social hours ?

it could only be started after about 7pm.. and its a bloody huge kitchen and underfloor heating, slate floor, new units and the time it took to rip it all out and replace it.. it took forever! The main drilling was holes through external walls for plumbing in washing machines/dryer vent/extractor hood and we tried to get that done on a weekend.. once the neighbours got out their mower we could get out the drill.

the council wouldnt have done anything anyway.. and if the students music was loud enough for me to hear .. they could lump it! We didnt start too early on a weekend.. so they could nurse their hangovers for a bit

We don't have adjoining walls either.

We actually spent the best part of 18 months doing DIY until silly hours.. but the rest was fairly quiet by comparison.

HurdyGurdy

We will be having a small extension built, knocking two rooms into one and having that big space refitted into a kitchen. Hopefully soon, if the surveyor ever gets his !!!!! into gear and actually produces the plans - been ongoing since beginning of August). This will likely cause quite a bit of disruption and will be fairly lengthy.

I will definitely speak to the joined on neighbours, even though the kitchen is on the other side to the joining wall, but they will be inconvenienced, I am sure.

I am not so sure I want to offer anything other than a "karma lives" wave to the gits that live on the other side, and spend most of their evenings, weekends, and summer days revving engines next door without a passing nod to considering anyone else's feelings. But I probably will, cos I am the bigger person

I would appreciate anyone telling me if there is likely to be any works going on in their house. As said above - it's good to know who the strangers are that are up and down the street etc. Plus it gives us a chance to make plans to be out, or not to invite people round, if the noise is likely to be excessive and ongoing.

I definitely would kick up one hell of a stink if my neighbours were inconsiderate and selfish enough to be doing major works into the early hours of the morning! Whether they'd told me about it or not!

elsien

I had words with my neighbour about scraping wallpaper off at 10.30 pm. Because they chose to leave it till then to do the shared bedroom wall. Not a loud noise in the general scheme of things but extremely inconsiderate when it's right behind your head and you're trying to get to sleep.

DigForVictory

No matter whether I plan to sell up & move in the next week or millennium, I'd rather my neighbours knew ahead of time if there was going to be a racket so we could all make reasonable & informed plans.

When we had building work going on, we signed agreements about radios & power tools & times, and made sure that bit got photocopied & handed to as many neighbours as we could get to. Along with invites to see the works, & tea & cake!

(One visiting toddler was allowed [heavily supervised] to drill a hole, thanked & "paid" in crisps - he's gone on to study architecture...)

It didn't stop All the fuss, but it made our position clear & included contact numbers so folk could have a grumble and let us know if they weren't happy.

Gavin83

Obviously if your putting some shelves up or something I wouldn't bother but any lengthy works it's polite to inform your neighbours. It's also good to keep them on side. If you need planning permission for any modifications to your house they could easily put a stop to it. If they know your considerate they might be more accommodating.

Savvy_Sue

As the question is about what 'you' would do, I've said 'none' because we live in a detached house so it would be vanishingly unlikely to disturb the neighbours.

However, they'd all know it was going on. I MIGHT tell the neighbours it was going to be going on, and I have done so when things are happening while we're away (re-plastering the kitchen ceiling wasn't something I wanted to be in the house for!)

If we were closer, I'd probably give warning of anything more than a day.

duchy

Why couldn't you do it during the day ?
That's what annual leave is for !

Trust me if you were MY next door neighbour you'd have found out there was plenty the council can do .
As you mentioned earlier their are rules about noise and work - You aren't exempt from them .

If someone is doing their best to minimize the noise it's a different matter but weeks of that crepe and no effort to do any of it during acceptable hours is completely selfish .

Don't you have a scad of kids ?
Why on earth would you be drilling late at night and disturbing THEIR rest on a school night anyway? I really can't believe you can't see what is wrong with what you did and why you wouldn't take time off work and get the majority of the work done in normal hours instead of working from 7pm to the wee small hours - especially with children to consider as well as neighbours.

My neighbour ripped his kitchen out recently- There's no quiet way to do it - but he was considerate enough to not do it when I was working (I work from home but not office hours) . It's what good neighbours do - try to cause the minimum of disruption and talk to each other.

pigpen wrote: »

it could only be started after about 7pm.. and its a bloody huge kitchen and underfloor heating, slate floor, new units and the time it took to rip it all out and replace it.. it took forever! The main drilling was holes through external walls for plumbing in washing machines/dryer vent/extractor hood and we tried to get that done on a weekend.. once the neighbours got out their mower we could get out the drill.

the council wouldnt have done anything anyway.. and if the students music was loud enough for me to hear .. they could lump it! We didnt start too early on a weekend.. so they could nurse their hangovers for a bit

We don't have adjoining walls either.

We actually spent the best part of 18 months doing DIY until silly hours.. but the rest was fairly quiet by comparison.

Bryando

I would out of decency mention to the neighbour I was getting x done like recently a carpet getting fitted. Was a pain as the guy arrived at 6 and the neighbour has kids so she worked with that for the sake of their night routine. Called being a considerate neighbour- something lacking these days!

Feral_Moon

Dustyblinds wrote: »

We would let our neighbours know of any disruption we were likely to cause. I even warned my neighbour when we were getting a puppy as we were worried about him howling at night, I buttered her up with a bottle of wine. She isn't very friendly and never warns us if she's getting anything done, but that's up to her, I can't be like that. Bit annoying that she knows my oh works night shift and her partner decides to make alterations to his work van right.outside our bedroom window, no consideration what so ever grr

I have a similar neighbour, unfortunately. They're currently renovating a downstairs bathroom which involves moving a window and completely stripping back the walls to bare brick, so lots of drilling and hammering.

I received no notice whatsoever, even when they switched off the water mains for several hours on two occasions to install new water pipes and move a stop c0ck. On the first occasion I was actually in the shower when it went off and the second time I had both my washing machine and dishwasher running so both were halted mid-cycle.

Completely inconsiderate and unnecessary and extremely upsetting for both myself and my dog

cepheus

Looking at the poll, it's good to see so many considerate people on here.

I was just getting a view, rather than planning any work, since both adjoining neighbours of mine have been carrying out renovations simultaneously and it was making me quite ill. It was not the noise directly but the fact that I had kindly asked them or their builders to tell me how long it was to last for, since I could make other arrangements and visit someone. The answer is usually the same 'just another hour'. Yes but what about tomorrow, next week, 'no just finishing'. Then it carries on for another week to a month, and it's that attitude more than the noise which makes one angry. On one occasion it was on and off for 6 months, the guy just did it when he fancied. Thankfully, as a precaution I bought some earphones as soon as they started.

It also depends upon the quality of the house. Modern developments need to conform to noise standards, such as having damped floating floorboards, so perhaps in such cases it might not be as critical. My house is an early 80s back to back design with four adjoined houses, and the floorboards seem to go straight from one house to another, so it's like being in the next room of the same house. It's difficult to tell which direction the noise is coming from, because everything vibrates when the hammer drill starts. With regards the walls, a normal conversation is possible between the adjoining bathrooms!

Thankfully, I anticipated this and bought some earphones as a precaution

It might also help to remind viewers on the various house make-over programmes to inform neighbours in advance of work lasting longer than a day. Once we all get in the habit of being considerate it makes life a lot easier.

PS a detached neighbour had some major works requiring planning permission. I was one of the few direct neighbours which didn't oppose it since any noise would be outside.