Noise pollution from my neighbour downstairs

[Guoy Darko]

I got a problem with my neighbour downstairs and I’m in doubt how to handle this the good (DJ) way… If there is such a thing. I hope you guys can give me some advice.

I live in a flat where mostly students in their last years of college live. I live there for a few years now. Things have always been great there. The view is nice, the people are great. I never had any complaints about my neighbours until last December. A new guy came living in the apartment under mine. Since day one I noticed a new person was living there: Loud techno/trance music with and especially loud bass. I went to him two or three times to ask him to turn it down, which he did…. for a moment. The next days the music gradually becomes louder again.

Last January at 6.45 on a Saturday morning I wake up from the noise of a loud bass. I see my GF next to me sitting straight up in bed, wide awake, telling me this has been going on since 6.00 in the morning. (The guy probably came home from a night out and wasn’t in the mood for sleeping and just turned on his music.) I get up, furious and run downstairs ringing his doorbell about 6 or 7 times. He didn’t open the door, but eventually the music dies out.

Next day in the afternoon he rings my doorbell to tell me to ‘never ever ring his doorbell again’ because it is “a horrible sound”. I’m feel flabbergasted because I rang his doorbell to complain about his horrible noise! According to him he “has the right” because it is a flat for students and students make noise and sleep at the strangest hours. I just have to accept that. If I have problems with his music I should buy earplugs, move some place else or isolate my floor (no option and a weird demand because the apartments are rental). I get angry but after a while of arguing I realize it is not in my advance to make the argument bigger or start yelling. I explained him my point very well, but according to him, his extra bass is far more important than my mental health. It was like talking to someone from another planet. I was quite shocked about how somebody can be that antisocial. Well it ended with slamming the doors. We didn’t spoke anymore after that.

After that argument I still sometimes heard him, but only for a short period of time. Not enough to complain about it.

Last weeks things got worse. Again the music got louder. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at night and sometimes during the day. Last night he was watching a movie till 2 in the morning. I had to get up at 6.45 to get to work…. He probably could have slept till 11 in the morning or something like that. I slept about four and a half hours and I’m now exhausted at work.

I decided to let the police take care of it. I called them and they are sending someone to him today to explain how things work. Still I don’t have my hopes up.

Okay, how to handle this? Let the police handle this? Have a noise war with him? Kick in his door? Stay nice? I dunno. It feels hopeless.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Guoy

 

[Daddy The Pimp]

Cool. You did the best you could.

Warned, than called the police. I hope now the things will get handled. If not, call the police every time turns the music on.

If this doesn't fix things up, show up with a baseball bat on his door and break those ****ing speakers and tell him that his head will be next.

You should respond to nonhuman behavior with nonhuman behavior.

 

[Desert Fox]

I am curious what advice others give. I often find myself in situations such as this one where I am 100% reasonable and the other person totally violates my crap. For instance I live an apartment right now and one of my roommates (of 3) is a total assh0le. This guy basically ****s in the toilet, doesn't flush it, pisses in the toilet, doesn't flush it. Leaves a huge mess in the kitchen. Doesn't clean his plates and pots and uses yours and leaves them dirty without asking. I've confronted him but the assw1pe just lies to my face even when I've SEEN him do it and asked him "what are you doing?" It's pretty frustrating and the other roommates think the guy is suspicious and a dbag in general. He eats their food without permission. We can't kick him out because the contract lasts until the end of the year. Not sure what to do...can't really call the cops on this either.

 

[logic1]

There is a saying........If you give someone enough rope they will hang themselfs.

Your course of action is not be the one who hangs. Dont allow his actions to cause you to react in a way detrimental to you. You must stay calm when dealing with him.

You could try some sort of trap. You know how he reacts about his door bell. Be creative. Allow him to hang himself in the eyes of the law.

 

[Bible_Belt]

I had this problem once. The landlord eventually just told me to stop complaining, and that they were not going to stop taking his rent money just because he was loud. I moved.

 

[MacBlast]

three words...call of duty. there is nothing worse to a bass boomer than the sound of repeating machine gun fire and explosions going off. my next door neighbour loves getting home and blasting his home theater to the max for a while. most times he'll rent a movie because somehow i can hear the dialog from it and know what movie is on.

so i fire up my 360. put in call of duty and turn up my bass boomer. it sounds like a freaking warzone. not to mention how annoying it is trying to watch a movie and he smallest sounds from an apartment can ruin it....but call of duty takes it to a whole new level. i even heard a bang on the wall one night and just shrugged it off....it sucks when someone can out flank someones sound system.

i recently got a new game battlefield:bc2 and this game is probably going to be his last days of booming any bass anymore because when you set a charge on one of the crates an alarm goes off and even drives me crazy till it either blows up or someone disarms it.

alot of times you have to fight fire with fire.

 

[lakeshore]

I deal with the same sh*t man. My neighbor has his f*cking tv on every god damn day and night and I can hear it all night long.

I slam the wall with my foot and he'll turn it down but then it just goes back to the way it was eventually..

Bottom line, apt living blows. :trouble:


The last place I lived in the walls were solid concrete. You couldn't hear anything if a siren was going off. This place the
walls are paper thin.

 

[speakeasy]

Almost anytime a neighbor has an annoying habit of some sort and you confront them about it, the problem will soon return. I made the mistake of moving into an apartment with wood floors. They look nice, but the bad part is hearing my upstairs neighbor stomping around constantly and driving me nuts. I take a broom handle and bang on the roof every once and a while to give her a hint to stop f*cking stomping. Maybe it'll quite down for a few minutes then it's right back to normal. And what am I going to do about it? Can't complain to the manager that my upstairs neighbor is annoying me by walking in her apartment. People just don't change their living habits and the only solution in the long run is to simply not share walls with anyone. Rent or buy a house or if you have to live in an apartment, go for a top floor corner unit that shares as few walls as possible. I don't know why they just don't build apartments with more insulation between walls. They are constructing a new building right next door to me and I got to see how the whole thing is built from the ground up. It's all just plywood, particle board, stucco and drywall. The walls themselves that separate the units are literally hallow. It's absurd, but that's how cheap construction is these days. If you live in an older city, with an older stock of buildings, you shouldn't have a problem finding apartments that were made of brick or masonry and are rock solid where you can't hear your neighbor drop a pin.

Oh, and to the OP, I think before calling the police, you should get the landlord involved. I think starting a noise war is stupid and immature and won't solve anything. Chances are, if his noise is annoying you, it's annoying other people nearby as well. A joint complaint will be much more powerful than a single complaint. I don't know why some people feel they can't enjoy their music unless it's at full volume. We have some relatively new people across the way in my building. One of the kids there likes to crank up hiphop on full blast and you hear booming all the way down the hall. Luckily I don't share walls with him so I can't hear it in my unit. But even hearing it in the hall is annoying. Why can't these people use headphones?? You get all the benefit of making your ears bleed with loud music without the drawback of pissing off your neighbors. That's really the perfect solution right there. Maybe everyone in the building should chip in and by the assh0le a pair of bose headphones under the condition that he not turn up his speakers again.

 

[Ease]

Buy a subwoofer and have a bass war.

Its the only way, fight it with fire.

He will stop.

OR, go ring his doorbell everytime. Do it just to be annoying, if he answers the door say whats up i couldnt sleep. If he complains tell him to get used to it or buy a new doorbell.

 

[Desert Fox]

I am curious what advice others give. I often find myself in situations such as this one where I am 100% reasonable and the other person totally violates my crap. For instance I live an apartment right now and one of my roommates (of 3) is a total assh0le. This guy basically ****s in the toilet, doesn't flush it, pisses in the toilet, doesn't flush it. Leaves a huge mess in the kitchen. Doesn't clean his plates and pots and uses yours and leaves them dirty without asking. I've confronted him but the assw1pe just lies to my face even when I've SEEN him do it and asked him "what are you doing?" It's pretty frustrating and the other roommates think the guy is suspicious and a dbag in general. He eats their food without permission. We can't kick him out because the contract lasts until the end of the year. Not sure what to do...can't really call the cops on this either.

so anyone got tips for my situation here?

how do i fight fire with fire here? i guess there is a convenient source of fire in the kitchen

 

[Credos]

Most students are idiots, and in appartments the fusebox is alwayse in the hallway, so just go down there and put of his electricity, and put it back on when you go to work.

If you're lucky he might be to stupid to be able to put it back on. If he reports you just say you had to do something to the electricity at you appartement and that you put out all the electricity and afterwards forgot to put on his electricity.



If that doesn't help you'll need to resort to other entertaining means, such as sabotaging his doorbell to go of whenever any doorbell is pushed. Pretty simple thing to do, once you're downstairs you have to open the bellsystem and just link em all with his bellwire aswell to get a parallel circuit. (be sure to put out the electricity out first before doing anything with it)

Though if you're a rookie its not recommendable, considering everybody will be linked to each other (so don't link your bell), but if you know some things about electronics you can use a diode to only make his bell be bugged. If I recall correctly a diode costs about a dollar or less.

 

[Kerpal]

Most students are idiots, and in appartments the fusebox is alwayse in the hallway, so just go down there and put of his electricity, and put it back on when you go to work.

+1

My neighbors at the last place I lived always had their music/movies on ridiculously loud, so I found the fuse box and just shut the power off to their unit for a few seconds every time. I think they thought they were tripping the circuit breaker, and they kept it lower after that.

 

[speakeasy]

+1

My neighbors at the last place I lived always had their music/movies on ridiculously loud, so I found the fuse box and just shut the power off to their unit for a few seconds every time. I think they thought they were tripping the circuit breaker, and they kept it lower after that.

Nice! I gotta perfect one too. When he's out and about, get some crazy glue and squirt it inside the keyhole of door. If it dries solid, he's screwed!

 

[user43770]

so anyone got tips for my situation here?

how do i fight fire with fire here? i guess there is a convenient source of fire in the kitchen

Get a lock for your bedroom door and secure all of your stuff (get a mini fridge if you have to). Make a point to never clean up after the guy and tell your other two roommates to do the same.

 

[Desert Fox]

Get a lock for your bedroom door and secure all of your stuff (get a mini fridge if you have to). Make a point to never clean up after the guy and tell your other two roommates to do the same.

Alright man, but this seems like I'm yielding to this *******. I mean the fridge should be shared.

I put up a note a week ago saying the next person to use my stuff I will have to have a private talk with. Sounds lame, but I never smile around my residence and I think they might be scared of me pulling some psycho sh1t. So yeah I put up that note and drew some psychotic smileys and flowers. Things have been untouched for the past week. The place is still dirty as SH1T but that's their problem. All my stuff is accounted for. But who knows how long it will last right. I'm thinking of setting up a webcam or something and catching them in the act. I don't want to do anything illegal like superglueing all their pots and sh1t together.

This has motivated me to work out and bust my ass in the gym. I'm going to get ripped and basically take respect if the *******s don't give it to me in the future.

 

[Guoy Darko]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the advice. There are so many reactions I cannot answer all. But to give an update: I have called the police today (again) and they go to his place tomorrow. The last few times they couldn’t reach the guy. The police recommended me to call the landlord and that’s what I did. I wrote a letter to them and send the letter to the police as well.

So I haven’t started a noise war yet. Many times I felt the urge to do so, but by doing that I will annoy people in the building that have absolutely nothing to do with it. Besides that, I work, so I have to sleep well. He’s a binge drinking student who can afford to let his bass boom till 5 in the morning.

Also, I cannot get into his corridor. I live with 8 people on a floor above his floor, where he lives with 8 people. I cannot get to his door, only the door of the whole corridor. The electrical circuit is also behind this door.

Well I’ll see what the police and landlord will do about it. If not, I’ll put my speakers on the floor and put on the subwoofers. Then it’s on!

so anyone got tips for my situation here?

how do i fight fire with fire here? i guess there is a convenient source of fire in the kitchen

I would make a deal with the two other guys. With the three of you, you do exactly why he does to you guys. Don’t flush the toilet, borrow his pans and don’t clean them. Eat his food, etcetera. See how long he’ll survive. The reason he can now, is because he’s the only one who’s doing it and the three of you are probably cleaning his ****. See how long he’ll last. Make a deal with the guys to do it for a week or so.

Cheers,

Guoy

 

[Guoy Darko]

Update: The landlady (well, actually it's a company. Don't know the English word for it. housingcooperation?) called him today about the whole issue, which made him furious.

He told her I'm not hearing him and that I probably hear other people (which I know isn't true). He told her his bass is at it's lowest (which is hard to believe).

The police still have to visit him, but he just plain denies it. Any suggestions for next steps?

 

[Bible_Belt]

Have the other neighbors complain about the same guy. That would remove any doubt that it was him.

 

[OzyBoy]

Ahh the joys of living with other people.

 

[Levex]

Blasting your system when his is loud won't do much good. You need to figure out when his usual sleep times are(when its quiet), and do it then.

My apartment's walls are concrete,can't hear sh1t. I love these older apartments built solid, in my previous one i could hear the neighbor flushing the toilet.