Poll: Apartments and Noise

[NLS]

Luckily, my apartment walls are quite thick and don't let out much noise. In addition to this, all the apartment layouts are 2 stories up or down. Which makes it practically impossible to know who your left/right/up/down neighbour really is, unless you've been inside their apartment and figured out if their stair goes up or down, left or right.

 

[Neonit]

i live in apartment right now, its rather small so i know everyone by their name. if somebody is making a lot of noise i simply drop by and ask if they could be a little more quiet. works everytime.

but i guess it depends on what people you live with. a bunch of jackasses might be harder to deal with.

i think it is pretty much regulated by law, after xx hour eveyone has to be quiet. i also have heard that there are laws regarding playing hard music even during the day.

still, i think you should always calmly explain your situation say, two to three times, then you have every right to get angry and do the "I SMASH AAARGH!!!!111"

or call the police if you dont care about their well being.

 

[F'Angus]

I've had really noisy neighbours before, the worst was playing loud club music with his door open till 4am...despite people on the floor telling him to shut up.

 

[Craorach]

I've never lived in an apartment, but I have lived in terrace housing. I was raised in it, and the rule was simple.

There is no point during the day in which our neighbours should be able to hear anything we say or do.

You don't disturb them, you keep the volume down, you don't air your dirty laundry enough that they can hear it. Inside your home is private and should be kept such.

 

[lettucethesallad]

My neighbours make a fair amount of noise, but to be honest, so do my roommates. I generally don't like noisy environments, but as long as it's between 8 am and 10 pm, all I can do is sigh, put on my headphones and attempt to ignore it.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think you should be considerate of your neighbors, even outside of an apartment setting. It just works out better that way. Thankfully in my apartment building, everyone is pretty quiet. This is especially useful for me as I work overnights and sleep from 8am-4pm.

 

[Girl With One Eye]

I'm pretty much used to my noisy neighbours. They have parties until 4AM, they are ALWAYS doing some form of DIY involving drills and hammers and their baby seems to cry non-stop. I live on the ground floor and they live one floor above, so they are always clambering up and down the stairs in the middle of the night. Luckily I am an insomniac, doesn't stop it from being annoying though!!

 

[5-0]

The way I see it, make as much noise as you want (within limits) in the daytime, but if it gets to the point where people are going to be sleeping, you need to shut the fuck up, or at least turn the volume down. I haven't experienced actual apartment living, but in my particular student accomodation we're all pretty considerate, with the exception of one foreign student, who decides to make tons of noise at 3AM and doesn't seem to operate on the same day and night cycle as the rest of us.

 

[purf]

Actually, right now the guy from downstairs is scoring a lot of points by his choice of music. Whoah, who would have known. Usually it's always Dire Straits - Money for Nothing.

For the poll, I chose "I" - it's a give and take (guitarist and father of a 10 month old)

 

[Kriptonite]

The practicing the piano in the apartment is just inconsiderate. If you have to practice an instrument that possess no volume control, do it somewhere else.
I agree with you sir.
I think after 10pm to roughly 10am people should be very quiet, myself included. For the rest of the day, as long as it's not INCREDIBLY loud, things should be okay.

 

[Latinidiot]

Dude, I think everyone has to be considerate. That means that every now and then you have to accept noise, and other times others have to respect privacy and quiet. If you can't bargain with them to reach some sort of balance they be dicks and it is best to move out, because nobody wants to live next to dicks. Of course you can become a dick yourself, but that increases the dick/nice ratio until we all drown in tidalwaves of cock.

 

[Arina Love]

i'm very quiet and expect people to be quiet too. Good thing my apt. neighbours are all decent. Except guy with scary dog i hate him with passion.

 

[Jandau]

I used to not give a single fuck about most noise. When I was a kid, my window was less than 50 meters from the train tracks, tram tracks, a busy intersection and a gas station. When I moved out and started college, my new appartment had a water heater that started up like somebody was firing a gun and it was in charge of heating my appartement and would fire up in the middle of the night.

However, I spent the last 5 years in a house on the outskirts of the city. It's the last house in a dead end street on a hill. My window looks out at a forest. The worst thing I have to endure are the crickets in the summer.

The thing is, my family will likely be selling the house in the forseeable future and I'll be moving back into the city. My noise tolerance is near to zero at this point and I'm genuinely worried about how I'll adjust. I'm a light sleeper by nature, so all I can do is pray I get a building with only boring old people...

 

[Xanthious]

Well right now I live in a loft apt above a coffee shop. I was told by the owner well in advance that they have live music (usually jazz) on Friday nights and the occasional Saturday. I don't mind that at all. In fact some weeks I go down to the shop and sit on my laptop and listen. The three or so bands they rotate in and out are all really good and it's always over around 11 or so.

That being said in my previous apartment there was a strictly enforced noise policy in the lease. The only time I had a problem there was when a rather urban couple moved in and thought blasting rap "music" at all hours was just the thing to do. Needless to say they lasted almost an entire month before they were evicted due to noise violations.

 

[phage83]

I've never lived in an apartment. However, If I ever DO live in an apartment I would very much enjoy quiet neighbors. While it's a bit off-subject; Every time a car drives down the street I live on with it's 'music' bumping and thumping away I just wish It would spontaneously combust.

that's what noise sensitive land mines are for, or a rocket launcher

 

[Doclector]

I currently live in uni halls. The main issue here is "how much"?

See the thing is, if somebody's playing loud music and shouting into the early hours, that's wrong. Dickish. It's acceptable until about midnight, methinks, then whatever party you're having really shoulda moved to a club or bar by now, a rule which most people adhere to.

But then there's the real dickish people, perhaps even more dickish than the people making noise, who have a problem with even a quiet meeting of people. Just people, talking with normal indoor voices and quite possibly drinking a bit. If you live anywhere near, say, people, you should be able to block out such a low level noise, but NO. Some people need silence. Complete, unnatural silence, and they will pretty much make everyone else's lives a damn misery trying to get it.

The real bizarre thing? Our halls is in close proximity to FIVE pretty noisy bars, one of the noisiest of which being literally just across the road. So...that's fine. Rhianna pumping out of that bar all night, you can cope with, but just five-eight people having a quiet drink or after night-out meal is torture!? What the hell kind of hearing do you have? Why do you think you have the right to ruin everyone's time, people who are perfectly reasonable and will, if asked nicely, promptly do their best to keep your hair trigger ears f***ing happy, because you, and only you can't appear to cope with quiet human speech!?

I'm sorry for the rant, but this is an issue that has bothered me several times. Basically, people are obligated to be reasonable and not keep others up with blatant loud noise, but they also have a right to make normal people noises as much as they please, and if someone can't cope with that, well, maybe they should think about moving in with a load of people who share their strange perception of human speech as an ear-shattering screech.

 

[Lieju]

As far as I'm concerned, making noise during the day is ok, but I kinda want to be able to sleep.
Although it's annoying if the pets, mostly dogs, make noise during the day, because the owners don't have to suffer the noise.

Living in an apartment is the main reason I don't have a parrot. Once I live in a house or a place where the neighbors won't be bothered by the noise, I'll be getting some birds.

For now I'll just keep my silent pets, reptiles, invertebrates, fish and ferrets.

I have had some noisy neighbours, having loud sex middle of the night, drunken parties, something that sounded like drilling middle of the night...

But BY FAR the worst was when they left their computer on for a weekend and aparently left somewhere. Every once in a while there would be the infernal BA-BING noise, that while not as loud, was so annoying since it didn't even come at regular intervals, it drove me crazy!

Later the same woman (who lived directly above me) caused water-damage in my flat, but that was another mess...

And yeah, she also LAUGHED maniacally, often during the night. And had a sign on her door telling people 'Intruders will be shot'. I'm glad she eventually disappeared. Even though that caused problems for the renovations after said water damage as they couldn't get into her apartment to see how bad the damage was.

 

[Valanthe]

What I've found is the best policy when living in an apartment is to be on friendly (or at least cordial) terms with my neighbours. I let them know ahead of time if I'm gonna have a party, and I usually invite them, I'll chat with them by the mail slot and often innocently but pointedly comment on I've never/always been a fan of that genre of music they were listening to last night, and I keep them informed of what I'm doing, for instance, if I'm working graveyards and need to sleep during the middle of the day, I make sure my neighbours are aware of that, I have rarely been in a position where I've had to be rude, because nearly everyone I've lived near has always been completely understanding that, while Apartment living is never ideal, we're all in this together, and everyone working together makes everyone happy.

I did walk somebody out of the apartment at sword point once, but that was because he was threatening to bust down the door of the single female woman who lived next to me, and I, who had been happily sleeping before he started screaming and trying to do so, was in absolutely no mood for being polite. The look she gave me when I answered her question of how a scrawny guy like me backed down that arsehole was priceless, wish I could have got a picture.

 

[Phasmal]

Ugghhh... Now I'm really worried.

Me and my boyfriend are looking for a place at the moment, and there is one flat up at the moment we're looking to get a viewing on.
It's on the second floor of a three floor building.

I'm hard of hearing. Most people dont realise but I do have a tendency to walk less-than-gracefully and occasionally slam things around. It sounds normal to me.

Hopefully I'll be able to let them know and they wont be annoyed.

I used to live next to very noisy people who would get drink in the middle of the night and come outside to have a smoking break at 2am, but luckily they didn't stay long.

 

[Psychoid]

I had a downstairs neighbor for about a year...she was an aspiring concert pianist. This means piano practice for SEVEN TO TEN HOURS A DAY. Breakfast? You're eating to piano music. Dinner? Piano music. Sex? Time for some piano music. Watching a movie? I hope it goes nicely with piano music.

You'd hate me and my drum kit

Although I do make a point of not practicing after about 9pm.
Also, I'm not exactly in an apartment - I just share a wall with the house next door - but if they asked me to keep the noise down earlier than that, I would.

Mind you, I do sometimes wonder if my next-door neighbour doing DIY at 8am on a Saturday when I'm hungover is him getting revenge for the drums...