Ambulance station - noisy?

JReacher1

I've found a great house that is lovely and fits my requirements 100%.  The only issue with it is that it is very near an ambulance station (literally next door).  The rest of the area is very rural and there is a big garden and open fields to the back.  My concern is that an ambulance station will be incredibly noisy if sirens are going off 24/7.  Does anyone have experience of living near one?

Alter_ego

I lived behind a Fire station once. Yes it is noisy but I was a fireman.
Having said that, we tried not to use sirens at night if it could be avoided.

Comms69

JReacher1 said:

I've found a great house that is lovely and fits my requirements 100%.  The only issue with it is that it is very near an ambulance station (literally next door).  The rest of the area is very rural and there is a big garden and open fields to the back.  My concern is that an ambulance station will be incredibly noisy if sirens are going off 24/7.  Does anyone have experience of living near one?

It varies of course, but some stations are just places for storing supplies and basically starting and ending shifts. 

Most ambulances are quite 'on the road' when on shift

GDB2222

It would depend on how busy the ambulance station is. Also, they don’t have the siren going 100% of the time, just at junctions and when overtaking. They may also make a conscious decision to restrict use of the siren at night, especially if traffic is light then.

Really, you can answer your own question by hanging around outside the ambulance station and seeing what it’s like.

dimbo61

Well as an ambulance paramedic for over 30 years I can tell you we are like the SAS.
Silent but not always !
We try and drive out of the station without making lots of noise and disturbing the neighborhood unless it's onto a busy main road with lots of traffic.
With every ambulance doing 6/7/8 jobs in a shift if we drove round with sirens blasting 24/7 the public would be staging protests outside stations in No time.
Rural station so only 1/2 vehicles and not as busy as city centre.
Quiet country roads with horses and cows nearby ! 
Run silent with just blue lights at night unless it's new staff learning 

AdrianC

Go and hang about nearby for a few hours. See how busy it is, and what the story is with blues/sirens.

GDB2222

dimbo61 said:

Well as an ambulance paramedic for over 30 years I can tell you we are like the SAS.
Silent but not always !
We try and drive out of the station without making lots of noise and disturbing the neighborhood unless it's onto a busy main road with lots of traffic.
With every ambulance doing 6/7/8 jobs in a shift if we drove round with sirens blasting 24/7 the public would be staging protests outside stations in No time.
Rural station so only 1/2 vehicles and not as busy as city centre.
Quiet country roads with horses and cows nearby ! 
Run silent with just blue lights at night unless it's new staff learning 

It would be bad for your hearing, too.

dimbo61

No surprise the number of older ambulance staff that wear hearing aids.
"  Its the bells you know that make me deaf " to quote Quasimodo !

princeofpounds

Ambulance station near me. I would live quite close to it. It's on a very quiet road so they very rarely use sirens to exit. They do use blue lights however, so you would need good curtains/blinds. 

The noise problem is bigger at the end of the road where they meet more traffic. That's where they start the sirens more often.

A lot of the ambulances actually forward-deploy to other locations during the day to wait for calls, but there's always a couple at the base itself.

If you're buying however, you'll have to do proper due diligence and go spend some time there yourself. No substitute for it as each station will be slightly different.

AdrianC

dimbo61 said:

No surprise the number of older ambulance staff that wear hearing aids.
"  Its the bells you know that make me deaf " to quote Quasimodo !

If they were deafened by bells on ambulances, they must be very old indeed... They didn't have bells when I was a kid damn near half a century ago.

RobM99

I live almost opposite a fire station and the lights/sirens only seem to be used when essential, e.g. at the main road junction or pulling out at school times.  To be honest I don't remember the last time I heard it!