How do you define excessive noise?

Notnow

Having looked at several properties where it has been stated in writing that there is no excessive noise, I'm wondering what exactly this means. One persons noise might be another persons excessive noise. Is there any firm definition?

Davesnave

The short answer is 'No,'

The slightly longer answer is that councils have noise measuring equipment that must quantify noise, but then it's likely to be a less scientific assessment if frequency and duration are thown in, which I'd imagine they might. In the end it's likely to be a judgement by an Environmental Health Officer.....who is human.

What's puzzling me is why the property details would contain such a
statement. By default, most of us would expect there not to be excessive noise around a property we were considering buying or renting, unless an existing source was easily apparent.

I've never seen such a statement.

[Deleted User]

Psychologists have done some interesting experiments on noise nuisance, and found the stress is about powerlessness, not the noise level itself.

They set up a room in which loud music was playing, and the subjects were asked to proof-read a document in order to provide an objective means of assessing how distracted they were. They then repeated the experiment in exactly the same way, except that they were told that they could switch the music off, but only if they found it too distracting.

What they found was that not only did the second group make fewer mistakes, but they also chose to leave the music playing.

Typing this has just reminded me of my student days, sitting exams in a room whilst there was a pneumatic drill blasting away in the basement under the floor.