Am I being unreasonable? (upstairs neighbour noise)

[ontheedge]

I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable or not but my upstairs neighbours have a toddler of about 2 and a lively little thing he is. He runs up and down for hours on end. I am aware children need to run around but it goes on everynight until at least ten thirty by which time I would expect a two year old to be asleep.

I have mentioned it but they joked it off, I have also knocked but they don't answer.

It's driving me over the edge.

There is a carpet but not sure if there's underlay.

I was going to write a note to them.

Or was wondering if I should contact the landlord and suggest better sound proofing?

The landlords lived there with their 3 children before and I only heard occassional noise.

It's also stopping me inviting people around as its a constant noise.

Anyone else had this problem.

If I was renting I would be off.

[ontheedge]

-- moved topic --

[SteveT]

Perhaps you should offer a proportion of the cost of the underlay in your next letter to them or the landlord.

Or wait until she gets a new baby and then they would probably move for more space.

[Moos]

Could you ask them to come downstairs and hear it for themselves? They may not understand how much noise he makes.

[Scruffy Mummy]

Gosh, I'm feeling so guilty about my downstairs neighbour!! (my three year old goes to bed by 8:30pm at the latest though) We do respond immediately when we hear him banging on the ceiling and get sprog to stop whatever he is doing. Sometimes, it's abit tricky though. And when we get the banging in the middle of the day when sprog is doing something like playing his drum for a minute or two I think it might be abit unreasonable but I always get him to stop or we move to another area in the flat where it might not be so annoying.

I think there is a balance - and I think that by 8pm it's not unreasonable to expect more quiet. Maybe they are just really embarrassed so that's why they don't respond to knocking?

[ontheedge]

Thanks when I say I've knocked I mean I've gone up and knocked on the door not banged on ceiling as find that rude. I totally accept it during the day as just the downside of living in a flat. Is it that small children are flatfooted that he make so much noise?

[Coach Beth]

I think it's just because they are constantly moving about causes the noise! When you think about it, adults mostly come in to a flat/house and then simply crash on the sofa, or at the computer or read or something. But usually, we're sitting down and then occasionally walking to get something. And small children love to jump - off furniture, up and down on the floor, everywhere. I think I read somewhere that they got a bunch of adults to follow physically exactly what a bunch of toddlers did all day and by the end, they were absoluely shattered and couldn't move!

[MadWorld74]

I have a similar problem with my upstairs neighbour. They don't have a 3 year old, they just love to have very noisey sex that seems to last until the early hours i.e. 1am in the morning. Furniture being dragged across the wooden floor boards, things smashing, screaming...and all this and the female participant wheres heals.....

Please, the 3 years old running about until 10.30pm, we'll do a swap. We'd love to have him!It sounds like bliss.

It's a very tough one. You can get mediations between neighbours when one party refuse to talk to the other. You can google it and find someone in your local area.

[ontheedge]

You're right noise of the adult variety is worse feels like voyeurism. At least couples with young child a bit too worn out for anything too vigourous and guess worrying about waking child. Reason don't want to make too much fuss in case get childless frisky couple instead! lol

[mockney piers]

My sympathies are with you ontheedge. When the missus and I first moved in together, the property (on east dulwich road) looked the part, newly done up, clean and bright.

3 weeks later the upstairs chaps got back from holiday and we soon realised the whole place had been done up on the cheap. That fake wood stuff had been laid everywhere and there was no underlay, in fact I'm not convinced there was any soundproofing between the floors at all. Every little footstep would actually cause ripples in a glass of water. Add 2 lively kids in to the mix and we almost cracked up. In fact we were so on edge the whole time that we almost broke up.

It wasn't until we moved into a place with peace and quiet (and actually dark at night, the other place had blinds everywhere, and the other neighbours had a no curtains and a naked 1,000,0000 watt bulb that shone into our bedroom) that we realised we'd had no sleep in 5 months and had gone completely loopy.

I've no idea what you can do, we never blamed the neighbours as what can you do, kids are kids really. We did mention it to their pops who was understanding, but again, what can you do? Best of luck and my heart goes out to you.

Sorry I've not been more helpful.

[Asset]

you never know, the child might be autistic and only sleep for a couple of hours a day and be very difficult to manage the rest of the time. If I was in that situation I would tell my neighbours but you can imagine the extra stress of having to worry about neighbours on top of the stress of having an autistic child. I think putting a polite note through the door explaining your distress is the best way to deal with it, they should tell you if there are any abnormal circumstances and if there aren't then they could try to be more considerate.

As MP mentions above, converted flats and children are not an ideal mix. When my son was small we lived in a flat and we were extremely conscious of the neighbours when he made a noise or ran around but then what can you do? There are only so many hours a day you can spend in the park.

[annaj]

I'd like to add my sympathy, although no clever solutions I'm afraid.

We're also in the ground floor of a cheaply converted building with minimal or possibly no soundproofing, I think it's very common in an area like this. Fortunately, our neighbours are a couple with no children who don't seem to agrue much or have noisy sex (hmm, suddenly feeling sorry for them!) but even just walking around and chair scraping is noisy enough to be disturbing at times. Also, if they have friends over to dinner and move their table we loose channel five and several other channels, most distressing if it happens during the CSI series finale! Being on the ground floor anything in the small communal hallway (door slamming and long, late night goodbyes mostly) sounds like it's in our flat, which can be annoying and embarrassing (on both sides, nothing like realising that if you can here their key turn in the lock they can probably hear you talking to your cat!)

Like I say, I have no clever solution, I just wanted to offer my support and say no, you're not being unreasonble.

It's really hard to know what to suggest. We spoke to our neighbours about noise in the hallway, they were lovely about it and mostly make an affort to keep it down, but we don't feel we can complain about them just doing normal things upstairs. I think the key for you is to try as hard as you can to be objective about whether the noise is reasonable or not. I know it sounds a bit obsessive, but try writing down when you're particularly bothered by noise, what time it is and what sort of noise. If you build up a bit of a record you'll be able to see if there actually is an unreasonable level of noise, or if it's more or less what you'd expect. I'm not for a moment suggesting you build up a dossier of some kind on your neighbours and run up there waving your noted book at them, just that it might be useful to help you be objective.

Other than that all can suggest is what we've decided to do, move as soon as you can afford to and never live on the ground floor again.

[Brendan]

Somewhere once-upon-a-time in the corridors of power (or probably a meeting room or office of power that was no doubt located just off one of the corridors) some folks decided,

?Hey instead of building more housing where people have enough personal space to be afforded some semblance of human dignity, why don?t we just let them split their already inadequate houses into flats thereby doubling the population density.?

Great fucking idea that was eh.

Sorry ontheedge that wasn?t very helpful for your situation was it. :-S I really don?t know what you can do other than try to get them to lay a better carpet.

[ontheedge]

Thank you everyone for your support. I don't live in a conversion but a very well built excouncil circa 1930 so can't understand why its so loud as the floors are actually concrete with wood over.

Before anyone says anything I bought at market value and was all I could afford I don't believe I contributed to the depletion of council stock.

The neighbours across from me had a young baby and there bedroom was wall to wall with mine and quess what it screamed at night. They apologised but I said I never heard a thing as I reckon if they were tense and anxious that they were waking me the baby would sense this and cry more and they would just get stressed out. This point is only an example to show I'm not totally intolerant.

[Keef]

Sneak in to their flat and lay mouse traps all over the place. That'll soon stop him rinning around :)-D

[SteveT]

I presume the flat is rented by the people upstairs and the landlord lives elsewhere.

You could explain the problem to the landlord and ask if he would consider insulating the floor with fibre board, and tongue and groove chipboard on top, and finally with carpet and underlay.

Other than that you would have to insulate your ceilings. A friend had similar noise problems when the flat above changed hands, the new people were heavy footed and on polished hard wood flooring. The previous occupiers walked bare foot so no problems.

When the noise became so unbearable she insulated the ceiling it cost around 2K in 2002 for a 12x9 foot room and she felt that it only stopped 20% of the noise. It did not stop the impact or vibration of anyone with a heavy tread. What was more effective was when the next tenant had fitted carpets layed.

She also invested in ear plugs ?2 per set from super drug.

[spadetownboy]

imho you are being unreasonable, some how i doubt that this noise goes on constantly day after day, and that you are making a mountain out of a molehill, learn to be a bit more tolerant. what do you expect them to do any way chain it up,gag it, its a child they run around they make noise.thats life.

[mockney piers]

seriously STB, unless you've experienced. It's not about tolerance in a bleeding heart liberal sort of fashion, it's a chinese water torture that drives you up the walls, no matter how understanding or reasonable you are.

I'm sure there are laws about how much of a non ground floor is allowed to be un-carpeted, and I'm pretty sure there are minimum standards for soundproofing, so if you get no joy from the landlord you could probably push a bit harder.

If you were renting I'd suggest moving up immediately, but obviously this isn't the case.

[SteveT]

That is all very well spadetownboy but when you are beseiged by noise that you cannot escape from it is depressing, and the older you get the less noise you can cope with.

[spadetownboy]

listen i,ve been there from both sides of the spectrum, suffered as well as no doubt inflicted a bit of suffering when i had a kid running around a 1st floor flat in ed grove. however the point i am trying to make is that children run around and make noise its a fact and there is nothing that can be done that will alter that. as i,ve already said ote, needs to show a bit of tolerance and understanding in this matter, something which i feel is not being down eg, "The neighbours across from me had a young baby and there bedroom was wall to wall with mine and quess what it screamed at night." what sort of a numbskull type of statement is that, it suggests to me ote suffers from a children should be seen and not heard mentality and lacks total knowledge and understanding of what children are all about , and while i am pretty much aware that yep upstairs noise can be very annoying and frustrating, i am certain that it does not go on continuously and that ote is not constantly being bombarded.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

You are right to a point Spadetownboy (never thought I'd say that) but 10.30 at night is highly unreasonable for a toddler to still be up.

[spadetownboy]

may be its being kept awake by noise from downstairs?

[annaj]

spadetownboy, you've taken ontheedge's comment about the baby next door completely out of context. He/she was actually using that as an example of expected, baby-related noise that wasn't a problem to show that he/she isn't generally noise intolerant or unrealistic about children.

They apologised but I said I never heard a thing as I reckon if they were tense and anxious that they were waking me the baby would sense this and cry more and they would just get stressed out. This point is only an example to show I'm not totally intolerant.

I don't see anything in the orginal or subsequent posts to suggest ontheedge is a child-hater and I think you're being a bit unfair.

[mockney piers]

I twice said something on the lines of "what can you do, kids are kids really", and said I never blamed the family, but that doesn't mean ontheedge isn't entitled to a good night's sleep, come on get rid of that chip* on your shoulder.

* whether -v- or -=-

[spadetownboy]

annaj Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> spadetownboy, you've taken ontheedge's comment

> about the baby next door completely out of

> context. He/she was actually using that as an

> example of expected baby related noise that wasn't

> a problems so show that he/she isn't generally

> noise intolerant or unrealistic about children.

>

> They apologised but I said I never heard a thing

> as I reckon if they were tense and anxious that

> they were waking me the baby would sense this and

> cry more and they would just get stressed out.

> This point is only an example to show I'm not

> totally intolerant.

>

>

> I don't see anything in the orginal or subsequent

> posts to suggest ontheedge is a child-hater and I

> think you're being a bit unfair.

i havnt taken it out of context whatsoever, i think it highlights a total lack of understanding about children on ote behalf, babies scream and cry and not just at night just as they also run around and play and make noise. while i dont deny that otc has the right to a bit of peace and quiet, that should not be at the expense of others to also live their life and not feel the need to tip-toe around the place for fear of disturbing the neighbours. its one of the downsides of living in flats, you are going to get a degree of noise pollution and the quicker otc accepts or comes to terms with that, the quicker he/she will learn to ignore it.