Advice on Floor issue due to Neighbour

Jaynorth_2

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Something crackpot is afoot next door. Every few hours, every night "for the sole purpose of disturbing [you]"? Why aren't they getting bored? Why did they stop when you threatened them with your "less than useless" council officials? How can they be wide awake after hours of drinking alcohol? How is your neighbour able to work each day on even less sleep than you are getting?

People are night owls for a variety of reasons. Legal and illegal.

This has concerned me a lot over the last couple of weeks and I have to admit that even before this all started I did notice that he kept odd hours and I would occasionally be woken around 3am to the sound of him or someone in his property carrying heavy items back and forth and up and down the stairs. I just assumed he was doing some diy or sorting out his work equipment because he couldn't sleep, and he usually went really quiet if I got up and used the toilet and made it obvious that I was awake.

I hope it is nothing illegal although it is a little beyond weird that he and whoever he has staying with him persists with all of this because it is a lot of time and effort to spend on someone they barely know unless they are trying to divert attention away from some other activity. I prefer to just assume that they are just anti-social, weird...

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Environmental Health departments have procedures for the same reasons that the Police do. Noise diaries are a tool to help the victim to record the disturbance and its impact relatively objectively. Next step is often informal or semi formal mediation. If all else fails your ongoing noise diary is a key component of the evidence needed for legal action to be successful.

Work within the system, do not sabotage your own case. Do not telephone, form a paper trail (e-mail or letter). If EH officers ultimately fail in their duty you can lodge formal complaint, you can involve your ward councillors and/ or MP.

Yes I know and I have been trying to decide if I should pursue this properly with the authorities or try and resolve the effects of what they are doing by modifying my flooring or repairing joists at great expense, and the general consensus here seems to be to address the main issue with my neighbour one way or another.

Fire_Fox

Jaynorth wrote: »

I hope it is nothing illegal although it is a little beyond weird that he and whoever he has staying with him persists with all of this because it is a lot of time and effort to spend on someone they barely know unless they are trying to divert attention away from some other activity. I prefer to just assume that they are just anti-social, weird...

Your sleep starved assumptions are not logical, they are not rational, they are unscientitic. You are not necessarily the cause to their effect, nor vice versa.

You do not know what went on before you took occupation. You do hot know what goes on when you are out of the house.

You do hot know exactly what they can hear, they do not know exactly what you can hear. Noises and vibrations can distort, amplify, echo, or otherwise be altered by distance in three dimensions and time.

Record the facts of the activity in your diary. Avoid mind reading complete strangers through walls. Unscientific. Crackpot.

Jaynorth wrote: »

Yes I know and I have been trying to decide if I should pursue this properly with the authorities or try and resolve the effects of what they are doing by modifying my flooring or repairing joists at great expense, and the general consensus here seems to be to address the main issue with my neighbour one way or another.

Do whatever repairs and modifications are necessary to bring the property up to a good standard, AND that you can afford. Rotten joists and paper thin walls should have come up in your structural survey and been penciled in accordingly.

Maxing out your credit cards to build a professional recording studio around your bed and wearing a tin foil hat probably warrants professional input.

Decide based on the facts of the issue not illogical, irrational assumptions.

Snow_Dog

Couple of other posters have suggested what I think might be your best first step. Ask a family member or friend if they would stay with you for a few days and get them to confirm what is happening and to what extent.


Sometimes things can become massive mountains in our own minds when left unchecked.


This way you at least have someone who has heard it and you can talk to about it and help to form a response to the neighbour.


I can sympathise to a certain extent, used to live in a similar place with only a 4" single brick wall dividing the two houses. Crappy moments were when he was watching football. Lovely moments was when she played the harp (yes a full sized one). Surreal moments was being woken at 3am to the sounds of him cheating on his missus (away at the time).


Personally I would:-
1. Get someone else to confirm it by having someone stay.
2. Approach the neighbour in a non confrontational manner
3. Seek advice from local citizens advice etc
4. Look into cladding the dividing walls with insulation and then plasterboard (will reduce noise) though the thumping not so much.
5. Legal action or move out and rent the place out to the local mob.


What people do in life never ceases to amaze me and this behaviour isnt surprising. Heres a thought, did the neighbour (builder did you say?) want to buy the place and you pipped him to it? It is wierd how one offhand comment can trigger all sorts of stuff. Hence number 2 in the list above.


Whatever you do, I hope it works out well in the end.

Norman_Castle

he usually went really quiet if I got up and used the toilet and made it obvious that I was awake.

Which possibly shows he is concerned about disturbing you. Its possible during the first 12 weeks he was being very careful to be quiet then as there were no complaints decided he could be a bit noisier. Is it possible the previous resident complained about his noise? People can be noisy at night especially drunk people but its very unlikely they are doing this on purpose.

If you're not willing to talk to him try sleeping with Radio 4 on quite loud and earplugs. You might still notice some noise but I find taking control of what I can hear makes other noise easier to ignore. It'll also share the misery of having a noisy neighbour with your neighbour.

littlerock

have you complained to your local councillor?

He must sleep sometime. I had a colleague who was temporarily staying in a hotel and someone in the room next door was a shift worker and would come in in the small hours and have a shower, watch loud tv, when my colleague was asleep. My colleague took to waiting until there was silence next door and then running a bath. Apparently the noise of running water is very disturbing for sleep if you are trying to sleep next door to it. So make a noise when you know he has just gone to sleep. Is he single?

Speaking personally I find the thump of a double base in rock music makes it very difficult to sleep.

-taff

When is this guy getting any sleep then if he is a decorato and not returning home unti 3pm? If he's working all day and apparently keepping you awake all night, he must be a mess too. I'd be more likely to think it was the lodger, who doesn't seem to work.

Sounds like he's using a dehumidifier or something. Just go round and speak to him.
Assigning a deliberate action to him i.e. he's doing it on purpose to annoy you, is a way over the top conclusion to start with especially as you haven't actually spoken to him or made any attempt to, to get to the bottom of this machinery issue.

Go and speak to him.

Jaynorth_2

Norman_Castle wrote: »

Which possibly shows he is concerned about disturbing you. Its possible during the first 12 weeks he was being very careful to be quiet then as there were no complaints decided he could be a bit noisier. Is it possible the previous resident complained about his noise? People can be noisy at night especially drunk people but its very unlikely they are doing this on purpose.

If you're not willing to talk to him try sleeping with Radio 4 on quite loud and earplugs. You might still notice some noise but I find taking control of what I can hear makes other noise easier to ignore. It'll also share the misery of having a noisy neighbour with your neighbour.

Yeah he must have been so concerned about disturbing me that I could almost hear him falling over as he rushed up the stairs anytime he realised that I had gone to bed so that he could switch on and increase the volume of his tv in his bedroom and yet I did not complain all I seemed to have done wrong is ignore his obvious antics and get myself some earplugs. And just to be clear the "normal or abnormally high" tv noise is not the issue - I can drown that out with earplugs and a noise machine, the issue is him using equipment that shakes the floor in my property particularly when I am trying to sleep.



How do you drown that out when you are being shaken awake every other hour of the night or when he feels like it? And what kind of conversation do you have with a grown man that deliberately behaves in this manner? Do you know how annoying it is to be trying to get some sleep after a hard day at work only to be woken up several times during the night everyday of the week by a grown nuisance who obviously has issues? The kind of conversation you end up having with that kind of person is the kind that lands you in a jail cell for a long time.

dickibobboy

I know you’ve said this already but, how does he know what room you are in? Even single skin brick walls would not make it too clear unless you are generally a loud person or your floors squeak etc..

I know if i was to quietly move rooms in my house no one would know even if someone was in the room next to me.

How does he know you’ve gone to bed? Tv turned off? Possibly leave it on?

I know i’ve not really helped but it’s hard to understand some parts. I don’t disagree that he’s following you around with something if he does know where you are and that is the main issue that i hope you get sorted.

TheBanker

This is probably not the case here, but I had a problem with vibrations in the night after a new neighbour moved in. Upon investigation, it turned out he was running his washing machine in the middle of the night. Silly sod had moved out of his mum's house which had Economy 7 and thought it was normal for everyone to wash in the middle of the night. The point is that when he started doing it, it felt like it was deliberate and inconsiderate but a chat soon solved the problem.

LateStarter

Let's assume you're not a crackpot; from what you say the neighbour doesn't know you, so there's no reason for him to be directly targetting you.


So is it possible that he IS using his loud TV etc as sound cover? So that you can't hear what's actually happening in his house?