Neighbour Troubles (again, sorry)

Malthusian

It is perfectly reasonable to play music in your back garden. If you expect to be able to sit in your garden and enjoy silence then you need to move to a more remote area where you get more square feet to the pound, a village or an outlying suburb.

If you can't afford to move then you need to reduce expenditure. What if your landlord told you tomorrow that he was selling the house and giving you your notice?

DFlights

Jojo, my landlord is fully aware of what I do and is fine with it. No customers use my house as I sell online and post, and take my wares away to events to sell.

Malthusian, we are unable to move due to circumstances like redundancy, job loss, etc, and are only just getting back on our feet. We already live in a quiet village, we're nowhere near a big town or city. I spend £150 per month or even less on food, how's that for reducing expenditure? All our utilities for last month were under £80, actual costs not estimates.
The house has already been sold with us as sitting tenants as it is, and I'm aware of the laws and rights and responsibilities both parties have when a landlord wants to evict. Besides which, moving is not just my decision; my partner would have to want to do it too and he doesn't.

Honeypop and Mojisola, yes I think I will have to try that. I've been looking into white and pink noise, just seeing what I can get. It's a shame, because the birdsong when it is quiet around here is lovely.

Andrew Ryan, thanks, unfortunately I don't find in-ear devices comfortable, so tend to stick to over-ear cans. I might be able to get some cheap noise-cancelling ones from eBay, the best ones are too expensive for me right now.

DFlights

Also, with regards to volume; she's absolutely mullering her phone when I'm out in my garden, it's very distorted. It sounds like she's whacking the volume up to as far as the phone will go. I'm secretly hoping that it breaks the phone's speakers.

Guest101

DFlights wrote: »

Jojo, my landlord is fully aware of what I do and is fine with it. No customers use my house as I sell online and post, and take my wares away to events to sell.

Malthusian, we are unable to move due to circumstances like redundancy, job loss, etc, and are only just getting back on our feet. We already live in a quiet village, we're nowhere near a big town or city. I spend £150 per month or even less on food, how's that for reducing expenditure? All our utilities for last month were under £80, actual costs not estimates.
The house has already been sold with us as sitting tenants as it is, and I'm aware of the laws and rights and responsibilities both parties have when a landlord wants to evict. Besides which, moving is not just my decision; my partner would have to want to do it too and he doesn't. - Pardon me but surely even a minimum wage job would pay more than your self employed role if you've cut down to the bone as you have? A LL can evict for no reason at all with in essence 2 months notice, you could stretch this to 5 months or so, with added costs. So you really do need a sinking fund incase that happens.

Honeypop and Mojisola, yes I think I will have to try that. I've been looking into white and pink noise, just seeing what I can get. It's a shame, because the birdsong when it is quiet around here is lovely.

Andrew Ryan, thanks, unfortunately I don't find in-ear devices comfortable, so tend to stick to over-ear cans. I might be able to get some cheap noise-cancelling ones from eBay, the best ones are too expensive for me right now.

Does your partner not work?

Gavin83

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

It's unlikely that her mobile phone is physically capable of reaching a sound pressure level high enough for you to have a leg to stand on.

It irritating you when you've said you're sensitive to noise is completely different from legally playing music too loud.

I don't know what it is but there will be a volume at which noise will be considered unreasonable. I'd imagine it's higher than most would think. It'll certainly be far higher than what phone speakers are capable of achieving.

Only thing you can do OP is just ignore it and wait for her to get bored.

Guest101 wrote: »

Pardon me but surely even a minimum wage job would pay more than your self employed role if you've cut down to the bone as you have? A LL can evict for no reason at all with in essence 2 months notice, you could stretch this to 5 months or so, with added costs. So you really do need a sinking fund incase that happens.

Obviously depends on where you are in your contract but yes, effectively you can be asked to leave with two months notice. As you said you can be stubborn and refuse to leave and gain yourself a few more months but this'll cost you and make it difficult to find another place to rent when a new potential landlord gets a terrible reference.

You should always have some savings available to cope with an unexpected eviction, I speak from experience here. Our whole eviction process was extremely stressful for multiple reasons, one of which was not really having the money to move.

TBagpuss

DFlights wrote: »

I'm going to from now on, but I need to get something to play music on first, like an MP3 player, or figure out how to use my phone. Then I'd have to get headphone adaptors, as I find earbud styles uncomfortable so have a big pair of over-ear headphones and would prefer to use them.

I am quite sensitive to noise, but I often get tired of wearing earplugs and don't want to wear them all the time (plus, all of the ones I've tried don't block out much sound, really).

Do you have a smart phone? If so, there are various free 'white noise' apps available.

I use one called 'simply noise' which I find works well for me - it allows you to chose between 'white' 'pink' and 'brown' noise so you can chose one which suits you, and you can also have it in either constant or oscillating (I find oscillating works best for me, it's a bit like listening to gentle waves at the beach, and I find that it is more effective for cutting out outside sound than steady white noise.)

In looking at it as noise nuisance, you would have to consider the objective levels - how loud is it? You might find it is worth seeing if your local council has any information (try the environmental health section) as you would be in a stronger position to make a formal complaint via the landlord or council if you can reference specific guidance. I think that something like playing music is one of those thongs which is not automatically a nuisance, but which can be, depending on circumstances - volume and time of day (or night) are particularly relevant, but frequency might also make a difference.

I have a lot of sympathy for you - I would find this hard to live with as well, but at the same time, the fact that something is annoying or difficult for you personally doesn't necessarily mean that the neighbour is doing anything wrong or that you have any way to stop them,

As it sounds as though they are doing this deliberately, you may also find that if you totally ignore it so they get no response or reaction of any kind from you that they will in time get board and think of other ways to amuse themselves.

Grenage

I think that post #4 summed it up.

If you can't afford to move, then you are currently living beyond your means; if you like the place too much to move, then the noise can't be that bad.

You sound like a particularly sensitive person, which is undoubtedly exacerbating the situation (about which you can do little).

PasturesNew

Stinkbombs.... sneak outside and pop one off when she's out there....

Soundgirlrocks

DFlights wrote: »

it is hours of loud pop music through phone speaker, as loud now as she can get it

I'm sorry but it is clear that you are over reacting/ extremely over sensitive to noise. A phones speaker can not get really loud level, the best so far has been the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 which got to 77.7dB at source, which equals to a raised voice (shouting is at source 88dB) http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/voice-level-d_938.html. And the directionality on a phone speaker is awful, off axis the level dramatically drops.

There are ways you can cover the sound - play your own music, run a water fountain, put up some baffling (you can use plants, or willow garden screens would work.

I would also get a dB meter (the apps on smart phones are very good) we use them in the pro audio industry as a monitor when councils set max levels but bear in mind its is hearing all the ambient sound.

System

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Enzymes today, very interesting. Had a day off work so listened to the broadcast.

Yes, very interesting episode this time. I like the podcast, as you get a bit of extra time at the end, when the programme goes off air.