I hate neighbors!

[coastie]

There are just as many a....holes down here as there are in the city,believe me.
Thought my hated neighbour had left but returned to her empty unit bereft of any furniture, so had to start the harassment all over again, turned on all radios full blast, scanner,TV at midnight, fullbore.Heard much slamming of doors car start up etc,but since then peace and quiet.must have got the hint.
Why cant bl....y people leave you alone!!
All I want is peaceful enjoyment of my surroundings and being able to do what you want when you want.
Every time I kicked up a saw, sander etc ,this thing would appear from nowhere and make some smart remark,so ended up closing garage door in her face.
P..s O.. and leave me in peace!!!!!

[Goldy]

Does anyone know what the laws is in regards to noise using hand tools at home in the shed. I`m lucky, where my shed is loocated is close to my neightbours house and they are both deaf and couldn`t care less. But i`m waiting for the day a defferent neighbour complains.
Is it true you can make all the reasonable noise you want between eg 9.00am and 6.00pm.

[DanP]

Can't answer for SA but in VIC there are times listed in the EPA Act for the use of various noise making objects. These differ depending on the day of the week. Tried to look it up but the Govt. has made the website too hard to navigate and i can't find it. In VIC you may not use the specified tools etc. outside the specified times. BUT... Between those time you can't just go berserk and be as loud as you want. The noise must be reasonable. This takes into account the volume, intensity, duration, environment, etc. It also depends on the opinion of the enforcing officer as to whether it is unreasonable or not.
Talk to your local police and they will be able to give you the scoop on the local (state) laws. Also, many councils have by-laws relating to noise. The penalties for these can be harsher than the statutory fines.

Dan

[GeoffS]

On one side I have a neighbour who also does a bit of woodwork - frequently at 11:00pm - he has been known to use the chainsaw at midnight! Oh! and a teenage daughter who likes VERY loud 'music' - but he doesn't.
The other side either have all night booze sessions or drift home (noisily) at 3:00am after being thrown out of the local night spots.
Just let either of them complain about my 9:00am to 6:00pm noise making!!!
Thank heavens for air conditioning and a fairly soundproof house.
Cheers

[ndru]

Originally posted by Baz
Bloody hell, no wonder they were cranky, after 45 hours of router noise,I'd be bloody cranky too. I presume you meant 4-5 hours or 4.5 hours.
Cheers
Barry

Oops! I meant to say 45 minutes.

I'm not a lawyer but here's what I've been able to find out.

Here in SA workshop noise is covered primarily under the Environment Protection Act. The EP regulations in SA permit machinery noise as per the schedule to the regulations. (last page at the back).

These times are "policies" within regulation. Complainers can also take action against you if they think the noise reduces the "amenity" of their living space outside the prescribed times above.

In SA complainers can take action against you, either by complaining to the Police or through their their own solicitor, under the Environment Protection Act. If you were to be sued for workshop noise it would probably be under the S.82 as an "environmental nuisance". I haven't been able to find a case on action taken under this section, but from some similar cases I think the plaintiff has to prove that the dB, frequency, duration, and timing of the noise reduce on the amenity of their property.

I believe it is a defence that the court take background noise (eg lawn mowers, road/train noise) into consideration. I'm not sure if the court takes into consideration the duration or nature of the noise (routers make a terrible whining noise). The worst case outcome for a workshop owner would be to cease their use of machinery or install sound-proofing before continuing.

Having said all this, I think you'd need to be up against a determined, cashed-up and wiley neighbour that would want to go to court. I takes times and money (eg acoustic consultant) for them to establish someone is a nuisance. The court could just decide that you're not making any more noise than that present in a typical neighbourhood. Personally, I'm going to keep what I'm doing within the hours prescribed under the regs but be prepared for one or more of the wankers suing me one day...

[rodm]

Workshop noise is something that is going to affect all of us at some stage or another. So far I have not had any problems but this is partly due to how I operate and in the main good neighbours. I never use machines after sunset or before 10 Saturday and 11 Sunday. Planing, thicknessing and routing is timed for midday and ceases for the main before 2pm so that people having their afternoon nap do not get disturbed. Noise becomes a cumulative problem - the guy up the street has been tagged as a nuisance becuase his music is always booming through the neighborhood. The truth is his music is not on all the time but because it is on regularly and always booming it gives this impression.
I am always workshopping so I do not want to cack in my own nest and be shut down because I overstep the mark.
Soundproofing the shed is an option I have thought about but wonder how much router noise can be dampened.
Has anybody done soundproofing, how effective is it and is it a costly exercise.

[silentC]

I live in a 'holiday town' and within spitting distance of the main beach. A lot of the houses around us are either holiday homes or are inhabited by retired people (ex tourists who 'always said they'd retire here').

For example, the lady next door (who now owns the house once owned by the BMW driver mentioned above) is only here at this time of the year and she has been subjected to the calming sound of my thicknesser working on 6" hardwood planks for the last two weekends in a row. She still smiles at me, so either she's one of the old school, or she can't hear it. In my favour, the surf is actually quite loud most of the time, which raises the general level of background noise, so that loud sounds are not as obvious.

I never use the machines before 11am or after 5pm on a weekend. If anyone complains to me, I will point out to them that I only get two days a week to do this stuff and that during the week while they are sitting around on their balconies sipping mint julips (whatever they are) I'm at work and otherwise carrying on my life. So far it hasn't happened.

On the whole, most people are reasonable enough unless you give them a reason to bear a grudge. It's most likely to become a problem when some city person, probably some middle-management guy, comes here for a 'peaceful holiday' and has his late morning reverie disrupted by my hand held electric plane. There is always building work going on around here, in some cases 7 days a week, so I'm but one of a handful of offenders.

As for soundproofing, having played in a number of bands over the years, most of which have at one time or another practiced in the garage or living room, I can say that there is not much you can do because of the various frequencies involved. Insulation batts will go some way towards attenuating the sound but will do more to keep your shed warm in winter and cool in summer. You pretty much need thick concrete walls, no windows, and a double door to soundproof a room. Having said that, anything is better than nothing and if you want to do something about soundproofing, there are accoustic products available. Gyprock walls with batts will probably be as good as anything.

[q9]

Something that isn't too bad as a sound killer, especially for high pitched whinny noise, is carpet.

If you go to a carpet place, ask them about getting old carpet that they rip out of places when they do re-lays. Can be quite good, and cheap. Easy to screw up against the average tin shed, too.

[silentC]

They used to tell us in the sound engineering course I did that carpet was no good for soundproofing because it isn't of sufficient density to absorb the sound waves, which can be quite long in the lower registers. For high-pitched sounds, you're probably right, although I suspect that the sounds emitted by most machinery is actually a combination of wavelengths.

The high-pitched whine of a router bit engaging timber is probably less likely to carry than lower frequency sounds like those from a thicknesser and the carpet will probably have more success at absorbing it. However, it's the lower frequency sounds that people are most likely to be able to hear from their lounge rooms.

We tried carpet in our rehersal room but found that it didn't do much to attentuate the overall volume of sound outside. Particularly with things like drums and bass guitars, which tend to emanate sounds in the lower frequency range. What it does do is dampen reverbrations which can contribute to the level of noise inside the shed, so if nothing else, it would probably help save your own ears. They told us that if you wanted to use carpet for soundproofing, the more layers the better and preferably hang it in folds, rather than just nailing it straight to the wall.

Anyway, I'll bet there is heaps of info on the web about sound proofing and if anyone really needs to do it, I'm sure you'll find plenty of advice.

[craigb]

I vaguely remember that if you cover a room in empty egg cartons you get a poor man's anechoic (if that's how you spell it)
chamber.

Anything like that covered in your course Darren?

[silentC]

Craig,

Well, we're now getting on to a totally different subject but yes, we did discuss egg cartons etc for creating dead rooms. The most important aspect of such rooms is to have no parallel walls, so that standing waves cannot build up. Failing that, you can use large screens to break up the parallel surfaces. The other idea is to use different materials around the place. Egg cartons are good for breaking up high frequencies but you need larger structures for bass. They do nothing to soundproof a room though.

Studios tend to not like dead rooms these days. They put in some reflective surfaces like timber walls to try and liven things up a bit. Midnight Oil recorded an album at a state of the art studio in the US or Japan (don't remember which) years ago but they didn't like the dead accoustics in the drum booth, so Rob Hurst set his kit up in the bathroom downstairs. Apparently the owners of the studio were flabbergasted that their multi-million dollar studio was no good for this bunch of yobbos from Australia.

[craigb]

Thanks for that.

I realised after I posted that query that I was confusing dead with soundproof.

So if you put egg cartons on your workshop walls you'll hear all the frequency of your power tools AND your neighbours will still get to listen to them too.

Cheers
Craig

[silentC]

.. and they'll sound great if you want to record them

[ozwinner]

Hi All
We had neighbours from hell once, three teenage kids with a single parent.
Every time the Dad went out, the music was cranked up full blast.
They used to time it, because the music was always turned down just before Dad got home.
This went on for 2 years, we used to get used frangers thrown over the fence, beer cans you name it, we’ve got side by side driveways with a fence down the middle of it.
Parties every weekend when dad was away Tomcatting, I used to ask them nicely at first to turn the music down, but in the end I had to take the crude “turn the f$#@ing music down approach.
The last straw was the all weekend party that started on Friday afternoon and went until 6AM Sunday, then started again 8AM Sunday.
There were about 200 people in their driveway Saturday night, screaming, shouting, fighting, climbing over our fence to escape.
I called the cops 5 times, other neighbours I talked to later, also called the cops, I think in total the cops were called about 12 times.
Cops come, music goes down, cops go, music goes up.
Sunday morning our street resembled a war zone, pizza cartons, stubbies, cans, you name it, it was here.
On Sunday morning, after the music started up again at 8AM, I got out of bed, said to the missus “people wonder why happens”, went and got some brick bats and started chucking.
I took out every window in the side of the house that faces ours.
One duffus from the party must have been feeling tough, he jumped the fence, so I bashed him.
I felt sorry for the Dad, and ended up paying for the windows, cost me $600.
The good thing is, they left the next month, ( they were renting, of course ).
Neighbours on the other side who had been there for 25 years were even contemplating moving because of the noise, so I think I did a good thing. Maybe I'll get a Noble peace prize

Cheers Allan

[Sturdee]

Originally posted by rodm
Soundproofing the shed is an option I have thought about but wonder how much router noise can be dampened.
Has anybody done soundproofing, how effective is it and is it a costly exercise.

My workshop as you probably know is under the house and I insulated the ceiling with insulating bats to stop the family noise from upstairs annoying me when I want peace and quiet in the workshop.
I can assure you that it does not muffle the sounds of the saws, router, thicknesser or jointer but I take care to use those only at reasonable times during the day.


Peter