Noisy Neighbors

[Chris_R.]

Hi all. I'm not sure if this fits in with this sub section or not. I browsed Reddit but couldn't find a subreddit that fit well either.

 

Recently my neighbors have been more and more noisy (shared wall) and it's getting to the point of keeping me up at night and more so on their sleep schedule than mine these days. I should also say this is just for my bedroom not a large room.

 

The sounds usually include a ........ variety of interesting sounds....(mmhm)... But usually just them talking or closing a door, etc. Usually not blasting music or anything.

 

Ear plugs are not an option as I HAVE to hear my phone go off in case work calls.

 

Currently I have:

• A 2.1A usb outlet on my alarm clock on my night stand

 

• A ton of not used 120mm case fans

 

• Lots of those noctua rubber fan screws

 

• An older altec Lansing 2.1 speaker system with a broken mini din plug (in process of replacing)

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

I was thinking if trying out maybe running a fan off of that USB port with the rubber mounts to see if that works?

 

I also was thinking, that I could write a "script" in C# that if the DB level got above xxx fade in some white noise for xxx amount of time. I was thinking possibly a raspberry pi to do this with but I'm not sure if those are capable of running a .exe file made from C# / .Net.

 

I am curious to hear your thoughts and ideas as well!

 

I know of course I could download some white noise app thing or use / buy something premade but I'm thinking of having some fun with it.

 

[Hiya!]

I think its best to just talk with your neighbour about it..or move if possible

[WereCatf]

37 minutes ago, Hiya! said:

I think its best to just talk with your neighbour about it..

If the walls are paper-thin, there's not much they can do about it, either. Personally, I think the best way the OP could address this is just to wrap up their sleeves, buy as heavy wood planks/panels as possible and set up a second wall -- the heavier the material is, the more sound it blocks.

[Hiya!]

Just now, WereCatf said:

If the walls are paper-thin, there's not much they can do about it, either. Personally, I think the best way the OP could address this is just to wrap up their sleeves, buy as heavy wood planks/panels as possible and set up a second wall -- the heavier the material is, the more sound it blocks.

Lol a second wall..that is awesome..and probably with added soundproof material.

[WereCatf]

Just now, Hiya! said:

Lol a second wall..that is awesome..and probably with added soundproof material.

If you're referring to those foam-things: they only help against noise inside the room, not against noise coming from outside of it; they absorb reflected sound, not sound carried through elements. To block sound from carrying through, you need mass, and that's exactly why I said to buy as heavy wood as possible.

[Hiya!]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

If you're referring to those foam-things: they only help against noise inside the room, not against noise coming from outside of it; they absorb reflected sound, not sound carried through elements. To block sound from carrying through, you need mass, and that's exactly why I said to buy as heavy wood as possible.

No i was speaking in general whatever the material is..but when you said build a wall..that remind me of something though 

[simson0606]

23 hours ago, Chris_R. said:

I also was thinking, that I could write a "script" in C# that if the DB level got above xxx fade in some white noise for xxx amount of time. I was thinking possibly a raspberry pi to do this with but I'm not sure if those are capable of running a .exe file made from C# / .Net.

The raspberry pi can run c# (.NET) exe files with mono on raspbian. You can make either a windows forms application or a console application. It is a bit more limited than a full windows environment though.

Another option would be to run windows 10 IOT core on the pi. That way you can run windows UWP apps (Also C#).

[cluelessgenius]

23 hours ago, Hiya! said:

I think its best to just talk with your neighbour about it..or move if possible

move? who moves because of noise. talking sounds reasonable.

 

@OP that sound thing sounds pretty interesting. maybe some nature/rain noises. but i think the ramp up would have to be very subtle not to wake you up and also im not sure how you would keep it from going nuts once it turns on.

lets take a meaningless scale of 1-100 in noise. if you the neighbours hit 30 or so you start turning up the nature sounds until they are louder or match your neighbours noise level but if the white noise then is 35 the pi will also pick up its own noise and keep incrreasing until max

[Hiya!]

3 minutes ago, cluelessgenius said:

move? who moves because of noise. talking sounds reasonable.

 

Booo.....i clearly said if possible and i am just sayin if the OP doesnt want to then thats okay

[cluelessgenius]

9 minutes ago, Hiya! said:

Booo.....i clearly said if possible and i am just sayin if the OP doesnt want to then thats okay

i get it,  im just asking myself who actually moves their whole life and appartment stuffs to new (possibly worse) place because of noise from the neighbours? i mean if it was like for years of terror with loud af music and them not listening to reason and the landlord not doin g anything about it. then, then maybe id consider it. 

 

@OP i live in a similar situation but kinda on purpose. the walls here are quite thick but in a block with roughly 200 apartments and mostly students and young single new comers to working and being a grown up in general it does get quite noisy from time to time. there might be music in the middle of the night. there might dogs in the hall. or weed smell from the floor below mine creeping onto my balcony. not very nice mostly but at least noone complains if i myself watch a late night movie with dolby dts (very bass heavy). live and let live i dont complain they dont complain. i dont think i could that anywhere else. i have though about getting a fancier place since i can easily afford it but what use is a fancy apartment if the grandma next door keeps calling the cops at every cough or im waking the babies of the family above or something id much rather keep the freedom.

again just my situation obviously im not saying you should do nothing. but honestly i dont see much you could do.

[Hiya!]

1 minute ago, cluelessgenius said:

i get it,  im just asking myself who actually moves their whole life and appartment stuffs to new (possibly worse) place because of noise from the neighbours? i mean if it was like for years of terror with loud af music and them not listening to reason and the landlord not doin g anything about it. then, then maybe id consider it. 

If you get it then then why the nitpick?

I put if possible at the end if its not then thats okay.

[PixelPol]

I suffered that as a real big issue, as had some savage neighbors for a while, and had bad luck with 3 families in a row. No problem currently I explain below why. Things one can do :

 

- 1) My sister's system. Freakin' simple: She put some disgusting music (for the type of neighbors) at loud volume. Can only do at hours legally "allowed", not at night, but still doable, as doesn't matter, if they'd hate it, you would end up in needing to negotiate, both, even taking you the initiative to talk. But is a bit an ugly method, I wouldn't do it, but it worked for her, but depends on area/country legislation, u could get into trouble. Worked great for my sister's place.

 

- 1.5) Talking to them!! Should be number one. But worked really bad for the two times, different flats, when I, which am told to be a people's person, went to speak gently about this to neighbors. Turns out some ppl take this too personal....even said with the best words.

 

-2) What actually allowed me to support TERRIBLE reformations noise of 3 months non stop polishing the floor (never understood why so much time, and how freaking well that Japanese paper wall would almost amplify the noise : I bought a 50 bucks professional headphones noise protectors, those used for roads machinery. I did look like a fucking alien, but even with some eventual date, she'd stop laughing at some point and even asked me for another (I had two, lol) for her.  It was rarely at night, but the family would fight like in an extreme walking dead scene at those hours. During the day, as I worked first as a remote staff, later as freelancer like today, full time, I'd put those protecting headphones, and a slight tiny airplane-like headphone in one ear to hear (swapping each time) some music. ( 'cause I like it) It'd fit as is a thin cable. yeah, u can't do this one. Just in case serves for another moment.

 

-3) Wall isolation: I consulted with some builder friend, he told me it was only with a special double wall with air chamber (foam wouldn't be enough, unless doing sth really expensive), specially built for that function, and still, only would partially stop the voice, aerial noise, not the one by vibration (furniture strong moving, hammers, etc)

 

-4) Stupidly easy and efficient solution:  Changing rooms and your WHOLE house furniture/distribution. Sounds drastic, but I didn't mind any change, was the only solution in one very extreme case. I just moved my bed to the farther room from that freakin' wall. Now the other neighbor would put loud music from 22: 00 to 2:00 AM , but it was classic music, so, not terrible. Also, now that I remember, went to talk to him (with the other neighbors tried but was a disaster), and without needing to get specific, he proposed to lower the music specially at night. Then I invited him to  have a beer, all fine, good guy. Could stand the situation thanks to the solution. I just got to live in half the meters, lol... Pro of that : I adapted to live in 20 meters or sth, so, next flat, way cheaper for being smaller, but near to the job, never a problem, lol. This solution is merely using the air isolation, and distance attenuation. If your house is big, just put the bed besides the neighbor that is more civilized, and farther from the nasty ones. Or your desktop, if the problem moves to be in day hours, or etc
 

-5) Grow a tolerance to it. It just ends up happening. My issue was made worse surely as I had always lived in the country side, noises that some could find strange, like the roosters, sheeps, goats, peacocks, village church bell, or cows, are/were music to me; people fighting as if they were fighting for food in an lost island, or doing an MMA fight before going to sleep, I was not used to it. Today, I use any of the ABOVE when/if needed, but not a concern anymore. Moving furniture still an issue, but with good (just normal music ones) headphones, no probs. Or just working, I get too absorbed. Also, I had very fine neighbors since a bunch of years in the 3 houses/flats I've lived at lately.

 

Hope it helps somehow as a brainstorm start point.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, PixelPol said:

I, which am told to be a people's person, went to speak gently about this to neighbors. Turns out some ppl take this too personal....even said with the best words.

No kidding! That has been my experience in the past. If it's a loud party, you can usually add excessive drinking into the mix. Too many people feel they have the right to do anything they want on their property without realizing that those rights end when they infringe on other people's rights. Talking to them is a waste of time, no matter how nice you are, and could result in violence.  I've learned that, if some jerk is playing loud music I can hear inside my own home, just call the police and let them handle it. The one recent exception to that was with relatively new next door neighbors that I had met and felt were nice people so I had a nice chat with them when they were partying too loud and there have been no more problems since then.

[straight_stewie]

On 2/19/2019 at 9:47 AM, Chris_R. said:

Recently my neighbors have been more and more noisy (shared wall) and it's getting to the point of keeping me up at night and more so on their sleep schedule than mine these days. I should also say this is just for my bedroom not a large room. 

I usually sleep with a box fan. That helps drown out all but the loudest and most sudden noises.

At times, I've had neighbors, either next to me in dorm rooms or above me in apartments that were extremely inconsiderate. I usually dealt with those by being a dick.

At one point I had to tell a dorm neighbor, at 3 AM, that he's not as good a singer as Steve Perry. Once, with the same individual, it became pretty obvious to me that the girls he had over were faking (The beds were rickety, and positioned so that the headboard was next to our shared wall, common sense will tell you in what situation it becomes obvious that someone is faking), so one night, my buddy and I knocked on his door, repeatedly, until he opened it. When he finally did, we ran in, emptied four large bottles of silly string on everything in his room, and left. He tried to stand in our way as we were exiting, but we just sprayed him with silly string too. Coincidentally, he never bothered me again.

Another time, my roomate and I had to tell upstairs neighbors in an apartment to stop having a party. We had a nice talk about how we wouldn't start complaining to the apartment office if they would start being quiet and also stop throwing biodegradeables off their balcony, which inevitably landed on our porch. They had been throwing parties every night for nearly two weeks.

At that time in my life I would have killed to have neighbors where the worst thing they did was close a door. The way around normal house noises is to sleep with a good box fan. That usually drowns out most noises, atleast it has for me.

[Chris_R.]

On 2/20/2019 at 9:38 AM, cluelessgenius said:

move? who moves because of noise. talking sounds reasonable.

 

@OP that sound thing sounds pretty interesting. maybe some nature/rain noises. but i think the ramp up would have to be very subtle not to wake you up and also im not sure how you would keep it from going nuts once it turns on.

lets take a meaningless scale of 1-100 in noise. if you the neighbours hit 30 or so you start turning up the nature sounds until they are louder or match your neighbours noise level but if the white noise then is 35 the pi will also pick up its own noise and keep incrreasing until max

I was thinking of having a infinite loop of checking the sound level, that if the DB was above xxx level. Break out of the loop and call a method to slowly do the equivalent of volume ++ very slowly to a pre determined level. Once there, a timer would start for say 1 hour. After completion time it would do volume -- until level = 0. Then it would go back to the loop detecting sounds again.

 

I'm not sure if I will take this direction or not as I haven't priced out what can pi costs or how feasible it truly is to run such a thing on a pi. The programming would be pretty fun and cake to me (programmer in C#) I especially like the thought of having it as customizable as I want where as most pre-made stuff for this only has a handful of sounds to play.

 

I did try  the 120mm fan on the night stand and it made virtually no sound except for the wind which wasn't enough. 

 

I've read through the comments too and I don't think I'll say anything to the neighbors yet because I think it would be weird to hear from me..."heyyy I can hear u close that bedroom door every night what's going on  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)" LOL!! 

[aezakmi]

get sum nice loudspeakers and play this at full blast at 2 AM

 

 

after 15 mins you'll have em begging standing on their knees on your door mate

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, aezakmi said:

get sum nice loudspeakers and play this at full blast at 2 AM

 

 

after 15 mins you'll have em begging standing on their knees on your door mate

 

Unlike three lefts, two wrongs do not make a right. Hopefully, you are joking.