Poll: Apartments and Noise

[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...