Noisey neighbours, friendly advice on what to do.

Zoe1345

We've been living in our new place for a while now, and are having horrendous trouble with the neighbours noise.
Their bathroom sides onto our bedroom and the noise from their shower is horrendous. They are also serial door slammers, and stomp/run up their wooden stairs continuously which run up our living room wall (it's a terrace). The worst part is, both parents and teenagers don't go to bed until the early hours and they shower and crash around in the bathroom between midnight and 2 am keeping us awake... Every night. 

I've politely spoke to them a couple of times now, and they are always apologetic. They're a nice family. But it hasn't got any better. 
Frankly, it's driving me and my husband insane and is doing my health no good as I'm hardly getting any sleep, have constant fatigue, and can't concentrate on work day to day. I'm incredibly close to moving back to my parents house just for a few nights kip. 

It so terrible that I feel like there is no way that the previous owner, an old lady, and her family, would have not been bothered by it or aware of it. 

I want to ask the neighbours whether it caused an issue with the last owner, but doubt I will get a truthful answer. We found out shortly after moving in that they fell out, but never found out why. Had it been from the noise and there been a mention of noise from the sellers (probate sale by the family) then we would have investigated further and we might not have purchased in all honesty. I also don't want to kick up too much of a fuss as we now want to sell within a year, but I'm concerned that if I go digging for info from them, and we dont mention the noise level when we come to sell then we might get in trouble for it later on. 

Do I ask them whether the old neighbour complained at all? Do k talk to them AGAIN in a more stern manner this time to drill the point home? Or Do we grin and bare it for another year (the thought alone gives me a headache) and say nothing so as not to cause a fuss, and stay schtum when we sell??

Part of me wants to start a noise war - I could be rather partial to some heavy metal music at 6am - but our neighbours the other side are so quiet that I really don't want to upset them in the process! 

Hebblethwaite

I think I take it to extremes in trying to be a quiet, considerate neighbour. For example, I have only watched TV at home via headphones for the last eight years now. I try to avoid blow drying my hair late at night or early in the morning. I won't vacuum, mow the lawn or run my washing machine before 9am or after 9pm (apart from a handful of times when I couldn't avoid it).
In return, most of my neighbours have been okay most of the time. However, I did have one set who would have nightly loud gatherings until 4 or 5am. During the day, they would vacuum the house while listening to music. Obviously the music had to be playing downstairs loudly enough to for them to hear it over the sound of the vacuum two floors up...

I think those were unreasonable neighbours! Neighbours using the shower or walking up and down stairs in their own house are not being unreasonable, no matter what time they are doing it or how annoying you find it. In my last house, my neighbours suddenly got a very loud television or speakers that they placed right next to my adjoining wall (or maybe just rearranged their room) - very annoying for me, but they were only using their living room as most people would!

I hate noise/losing sleep and completely understand why it is making you miserable, but think you are being unreasonable in expecting that your neighbours won't go about their day to day lives in a terrace. Your neighbours aren't doing anything wrong by showering or moving around their house. The problem is with the sound proofing between your homes and your sensitivity to the sound. You might want to invest in some noise cancelling headphones that are comfortable enough to sleep in until you can move to a house with better soundproofing or no adjoining walls. I find that wearing even cheap headphones with no noise-cancelling properties is enough to block out most noise from neighbours - you can just play white noise if you don't want to listen to anything else. Perhaps you can move the head of your bed away from the adjoining wall?

My parents have elderly neighbours whose TV volume and nocturnalism have both steadily increased with age. It's annoying sometimes, but they know and like their neighbours (of almost 40 years), and accept it's just part of living with a shared wall. Heaven knows the neighbours lived through me and my brothers' toddler years without complaint!

Tldr: I have sympathy because I hate noise, but don't think your neighbours are being unreasonable for just going about their activities of daily living.

Aranyani

Perhaps you should start sleeping in a room that doesn’t connect to their bathroom? 

warby68

What will finding out if it was a problem for previous occupants do for you other than make you feel you are in the right even more?
If you have already decided to move then you will be solving the problem in the foreseeable future. The neighbours' behaviour is not really abnormal - its their house or the lack of sound proofing that's the problem. 
Sleeping in another part of your house or using headphones, even if not ideal should help with your fatigue and stress issues and its less drastic than moving back to parents. Starting a war makes no sense, tiredness talking maybe?
By all means have another friendly chat - blame the houses not them - but you also need to work on your own solutions not just martyr yourselves.

tacpot12

Earplugs. You can buy the soft foam ones in bulk on Amazon. They work well for noisy neighbours.

To solve the problem for good, I would look at soundproofing the wall between their bathroom and your bedroom. You need a couple of layers of plasterboard designed for soundproofing, like Gyproc Soundbloc, mounted on resilient bars on wooden battens fixes with a resilient pad between the wall and batten. This will avoid you having your purchasers complain that you were not open and honest with them. 

Stenwold

I've had noisy neighbours previously, it was soul destroying when they were having parties every other night with lots of antisocial behaviour.

However, this seems more like an issue with general noise any household makes bleeding through - you can't vilify someone for having a shower in their own home. Deliberately starting a 'noise war' is a bit silly, and it won't end well.

As others have suggested, soundproofing, ear plugs, or moving rooms would be a good place to start.

MFWannabe

All of the above advice is good 
They're not really being nuisance noisy neighbours if they’re just moving around their property, unfortunately you need to find ways to handle and cope with it until you move if that’s what you want to do. Very good suggestions here of earplugs, moving bedrooms and sound proofing 

Definitely do not start a noise war! 
Good Luck; I hope you can find a solution 

Zoe1345

Aranyani said:

Perhaps you should start sleeping in a room that doesn’t connect to their bathroom? 

Yes, I would, if there were one big enough for our bed. Alas we dont have the luxury of 2+ double bedrooms. Pretty certain for most people this would be the first thing they'd consider! Even so, the sound reverberates through that entire side of the house, so unless I wanted to sleep on our staircase or in our bathroom then it would be difficult...

tacpot12 said:

Earplugs. You can buy the soft foam ones in bulk on Amazon. They work well for noisy neighbours.

To solve the problem for good, I would look at soundproofing the wall between their bathroom and your bedroom. You need a couple of layers of plasterboard designed for soundproofing, like Gyproc Soundbloc, mounted on resilient bars on wooden battens fixes with a resilient pad between the wall and batten. This will avoid you having your purchasers complain that you were not open and honest with them. 

Thanks for trying to give me a constructive response. The bedroom wall has been soundproofed as much as it can without loosing so much space you cant fit furniture in - 50mm of rubber matting, sound dampening board etc. Which we paid a lot of money to have installed. Unfortunately there  just wasnt the room for a resilient bars system. I should have mentioned we'd taken this measure already in the original post. And we both wear earplugs to bed, very expensive high quality ones. Neither, suffice to exclude impact based sound to such an extreme. Or the volume of the mums shrill voice hollaring up the stairs. 

warby68 said:

What will finding out if it was a problem for previous occupants do for you other than make you feel you are in the right even more?
If you have already decided to move then you will be solving the problem in the foreseeable future. The neighbours' behaviour is not really abnormal - its their house or the lack of sound proofing that's the problem. 
Sleeping in another part of your house or using headphones, even if not ideal should help with your fatigue and stress issues and its less drastic than moving back to parents. Starting a war makes no sense, tiredness talking maybe?
By all means have another friendly chat - blame the houses not them - but you also need to work on your own solutions not just martyr yourselves.

 Perhaps not "abnormal" but inconsiderate to say the least. Irrelevant of whether it is the house, they are aware and continue with being inconsiderate. The "war" comment was sarcasm, to lighten the sombre 3am mood. Maybe that was lost in the moment. I'm not sure how I'd be martyring myself in any of this exactly? We've already taken a number of our own attempts to rectify this - earplugs, soundproofing. If this was standard behaviour, we'd be dealing with it from the neighbours the other side and they'd be dealing with it from us. But they and we do not, and they and we are considerate of the fact it is a terrace and we keep the noise down on weekdays after 11. Pretty reasonable and civil behaviour I'd argue.  

Hebblethwaite said:

I think I take it to extremes in trying to be a quiet, considerate neighbour. For example, I have only watched TV at home via headphones for the last eight years now. I try to avoid blow drying my hair late at night or early in the morning. I won't vacuum, mow the lawn or run my washing machine before 9am or after 9pm (apart from a handful of times when I couldn't avoid it).
In return, most of my neighbours have been okay most of the time. However, I did have one set who would have nightly loud gatherings until 4 or 5am. During the day, they would vacuum the house while listening to music. Obviously the music had to be playing downstairs loudly enough to for them to hear it over the sound of the vacuum two floors up...

I think those were unreasonable neighbours! Neighbours using the shower or walking up and down stairs in their own house are not being unreasonable, no matter what time they are doing it or how annoying you find it. In my last house, my neighbours suddenly got a very loud television or speakers that they placed right next to my adjoining wall (or maybe just rearranged their room) - very annoying for me, but they were only using their living room as most people would!

I hate noise/losing sleep and completely understand why it is making you miserable, but think you are being unreasonable in expecting that your neighbours won't go about their day to day lives in a terrace. Your neighbours aren't doing anything wrong by showering or moving around their house. The problem is with the sound proofing between your homes and your sensitivity to the sound. You might want to invest in some noise cancelling headphones that are comfortable enough to sleep in until you can move to a house with better soundproofing or no adjoining walls. I find that wearing even cheap headphones with no noise-cancelling properties is enough to block out most noise from neighbours - you can just play white noise if you don't want to listen to anything else. Perhaps you can move the head of your bed away from the adjoining wall?

My parents have elderly neighbours whose TV volume and nocturnalism have both steadily increased with age. It's annoying sometimes, but they know and like their neighbours (of almost 40 years), and accept it's just part of living with a shared wall. Heaven knows the neighbours lived through me and my brothers' toddler years without complaint!

Tldr: I have sympathy because I hate noise, but don't think your neighbours are being unreasonable for just going about their activities of daily living.

Thanks - sounds like your parents are troopers. I'm not expecting them not to go about their business at all. But there is a clear lack of concerted effort to be considerate here. The force at which the doors vibrate the house when they "shut " them is only possible through a hard slam. It's not much to ask them to close rather than slam their doors (which I have), they don't seem to struggle with this during the day. The loud shouting up the stairs at 2 am is not at all necessary - failed to.mentikn this originally - the mum and daughter like to have screaming matches at 2am on occasion too. The running at full force and stomping up and down the stairs continuously is also not necessary, as we hear them when they walk normally up the stairs during the day, and we can deal with that. It's like midnight hits and they become a herd of 200 stone elephants (alas I have no iidea how much elephants weight...) they have had old ladies living either side of them for the 10 years they have lived there, so haven't had to experience themselves the way that noise travels through the house. The house the other side of them is up for sale, and I do hope a lovely young couple with a crying baby move in, or someone who will actually play loud music late into the night. So they might understand a bit more. 

The headboard is as far away from the adjoining wall that it can get - which is the other side of the room...

This isn't just a case of noise sensitivity. Anyone who has been in our house after midnight is shocked by the sudden increase in door slamming and banging and crashing that occurs. And it is not occasionally. If it were just weekends, for example, I'd be fine with it, but it is every single weeknight too. I'm begining to just assume we live next door to Vampires... The lot of 'em! 

Thanks for the replies, but I think people have misunderstood me in that I expect them to be silent. Not at all. My questions were 3 fold, and infact regarding our response rather than wanting comment on whether or not I'm being "over sensitive" or the neighbours "inconsiderate" : would you ask them if it had been an issue with previous neighbours, one that had caused a dispute, and thus should this have been declared about the house as there is no way we could have known about this before purchase (and yes I do understand that noise is subjective) - this will give us an idea, a."public view" if you will, of where our obligation to disclose stands? judging by the fact that everyone thinks this is normal behaviour and I'm over reacting I'd guess none of you'd be too p****d if you bought from a buyer who didn't mention it. Secondly, would you talk to them again about it, or suck it up and keep schtum until selling? And then, I guess the third indirect question is how upfront are we about this when we sell up? How likely will this put off buyers (we'd never have purchase shad we been aware). 

Zoe1345

Stenwold said:

I've had noisy neighbours previously, it was soul destroying when they were having parties every other night with lots of antisocial behaviour.

However, this seems more like an issue with general noise any household makes bleeding through - you can't vilify someone for having a shower in their own home. Deliberately starting a 'noise war' is a bit silly, and it won't end well.

As others have suggested, soundproofing, ear plugs, or moving rooms would be a good place to start.

It really does seem my noise war comment was taken seriously. It was not serious. 

lookstraightahead

I live in an apartment and we are always careful. I used to live near a main road but moved as I got to the point where I thought cars shouldn't be on it - best things  ever did before i went completely bonkers! 
To be honest you say when you are trying to sleep - my husband works nights and no one thinks of that, so folks TVs in the day and drilling work etc disturb him, but I can't expect them to stop. It's up to your neighbours when the shower / sleep etc.

I would move personally. Or move rooms and just make do with single sleep.

Zoe1345

MFWannabe said:

All of the above advice is good 
They're not really being nuisance noisy neighbours if they’re just moving around their property, unfortunately you need to find ways to handle and cope with it until you move if that’s what you want to do. Very good suggestions here of earplugs, moving bedrooms and sound proofing 

Definitely do not start a noise war! 
Good Luck; I hope you can find a solution 

All above attempts to deal with have been taken. 
Noise war comment was sarcasm. Although I do think someone needs to make them directly aware of how noise travels in the houses when they are trying to sleep, and it might make them more considerate. As talking to them has not helped despite a response of " we've always know how bad the soundproofing is". 
Not vilifying as such, as I said, they are a lovely family. And I have no desire to fall out with them over it.