Advice on Floor issue due to Neighbour

Jaynorth_2

I bought and moved into an old 2 up 2 down house (built 1910) at the end of July and almost immediately started having problems with my neighbour. He is a decorator and he usually returns home around 3pm and invites his friends round for drinks most days of the week usually until 12 or 1 am, and they can be quite loud but I never complained and just left them to it.


Later I noticed that whenever I went to bed he would quickly race upstairs to his bedroom and turn his tv on with the volume quite high almost as if he was trying to see if I would complain but again I left him to it and bought earplugs.


Then in November he started using some kind of equipment which would shake the floor in the corresponding room in my property making it almost impossible for me to get a good nights sleep. I cannot hear whatever it is that he is using but I can hear him switch it on and off and sometimes it is almost as if it is hitting the floor in his property and I can feel the impact through anything that is in contact with the floor like my bed or a chair or sofa.


The council's noise pollution team are less than useless in my area particularly if it is not loud music which you can hear 3 or 4 streets away so I have decided to try and approach the problem from a different angle and see if there is anything that I can do in my property that can stop the floor from shaking.


I spoke to a builder and he told me that because my house is so old it is more than likely that the timbers are old and shaky and the walls half rotten, so I want to know if lifting the carpet and floorboards and fixing some noggins to the joists would stop the floor from shaking because it seems very odd that what somebody is doing in a neighbouring property can have such an effect on my property bearing in mind that there is no loud noise associated with whatever equipment he is using so it cannot be that powerful.

SandraX

From what I read, chase the council, good luck!

naf123

SandraX wrote: »

From what I read, chase the council, good luck!

Need to think twice . Anything official needs to be declared when selling

naf123

Is there suspension springs that you can put under the bed legs? I'm sure some engineers will be along soon .

Jaynorth_2

naf123 wrote: »

Need to think twice . Anything official needs to be declared when selling

I know but I literally just bought the place so selling is not really an option right now and my council really is bad with these kind of things.

Jaynorth_2

naf123 wrote: »

Is there suspension springs that you can put under the bed legs? I'm sure some engineers will be along soon .

At the moment I am using thick recycled rubber slabs which I bought from a sound proofing shop and they help but they do not stop the impact that you feel and my neighbour just started doing it intermittently during the night so maybe every hour or hour and a half, it is almost as if the intensity is increased so the floor and my bed get a large shove and I am woken up. He does this 4 or 5 times a night and he is obviously being assisted by whichever of his mates is around drinking with him.

J_B

Have you considered speaking to him?

ic

Can you swap your rooms over?

I had trouble with my neighbours kids being really noisy in the adjoining bedroom early in the morning. Rather than kick up a fuss I just swapped my front and back bedrooms over, the back bedroom was smaller but separated from the neighbours by the hallway running to my bathroom. A month after I did that, the couple next door split-up and the woman left taking the kids with her. Even so, 11 years later I've not moved the rooms back as I actually find the back bedroom quieter as its away from the road, and cooler in the summer as its north facing.

Jaynorth_2

J_B wrote: »

Have you considered speaking to him?

And say what? "why are you being weird and anti-social?"



Bear in mind all of this nonsense started barely 12 weeks after I moved in so it is not as if there was an argument or even tension between us and frankly I have not had time for any of that because I have been sorting out all the minor repairs that are usually required when you first move in to a house.



And to make matters worse my sister and I met him when we came for a second viewing of the property before I bought it because he knew the estate agent and he was polite to us and the estate agent told me she had known him (my neighbour) and his wife for years and they were "lovely people" - In hindsight I know that estate agents say anything to sell a property but I felt that they were decent people and I have seen the estate agent on more than one occasion socialising with them since I have moved in.


After I moved in I bumped into him on a few occasions and I was polite and always said hello but now I would not spit in his face if he was on fire. This is someone who has enlisted the assistance of other people to spend hours in the dead of night operating machinery with the sole purpose of disturbing me - someone they do not even know! and even going as far as following me from room to room (I have heard someone carrying a heavy item and plugging it in) at 2am, 3am and 4am in the morning. Frankly I do not want to have anything to do with him much less have a conversation.

Jaynorth_2

ic wrote: »

Can you swap your rooms over?

I have tried but because he is doing it deliberately he just follows me to the corresponding room in his property.

These houses are very old and of single brick construction so the soundproofing in not really the best unfortunately which is why rather than complain when he was turning his tv up loud at 1am in the morning, I bought myself some earplugs and left him it.

Lorian

Are you sure the vibration is not your water supply pipes vibrating, particularly after flushing the toilet perhaps, if the valve is faulty, before retiring? It can set up deep vibrations for a long time.