Neighbour Overreacting About (Perceived) Noise

We’ve had some posts here about noisy neighbours, but what do you do in the opposite situation – when a neighbour complains about sounds that aren’t unreasonably loud?

DH and I recently moved to a terraced house that is the second house from the end.

The day after we moved in, our neighour in the end house, an elderly man, introduced himself to DH. He explained that his wife has COPD and is sometimes up at night coughing, plus the medication that she takes gives her insomnia, so she needs quiet.

Fine, DH and I aren’t loud partiers. We didn’t think there would be a problem.

The following Sunday morning, we receive a knock on our door. It’s the neighbour, asking if the previous night, we had been disturbed by the loud music playing from the flat across the street at 4 in the morning – not next door, or even in the same row of houses – but across the street.

DH and I are both extremely light sleepers, and we had heard nothing.

I told neighbour that I hadn’t been disturbed at all.

Neighbour then said that he would “have words” with this guy because this had happened repeatedly and he was becoming a nuisance.

Then this Sunday morning, there was another knock at our door. It was our neighbour again. This time, he said he wanted to speak to us about the noise that we were making.

Now, DH recently got a home entertainment system, and he turns it up quite loudly during the day. However, he does turn the volume down when it gets late.

Just in case, I asked the neighbour if the problem was the TV, thinking that if it was I would simply let DH know, he would lower the volume, and problem solved.

However, the neighbour said it wasn’t the TV, it was that we were slamming doors at 4:00 in the morning.

Well, we weren’t. To me, slamming doors sounds like DH and I had a big row and were storming into different rooms, slamming the doors behind us. That just didn’t happen.

Now, I use the loo many times at night due to fibroids and I may  have opened and closed the bathroom door a few times, but I definitely  never slammed it.

Neighbour said to me that I’m new here so I probably don’t realise it, but the way these houses are built everything echoes and noises are magnified.

So WTF does that mean? That I can’t move around in my own home comfortably without worrying that I’ll disturb my neighbours?

To put things into perspective, I recently suffered from insomnia that was so severe and disabling that I had to leave a job because of it. Yet I have never in my life complained to someone about noise  unless it was after hours and the noise was something like music being played so loudly the walls and the ceiling were shaking.

If I’m being kept awake by a sound – and I’ve been woken up by the sound of a cloth rubbing against furniture - but the person making the sound isn’t being unreasonable, I just do the best I can to try to fall asleep and if not, I just deal with not sleeping. It’s
my problem, not someone else’s.

We are invited to a  New Year’s party in someone else’s home -  nowhere near where we live – and DH is already concerned that this neighbour is going to complain about our walking in our front door – not making any loud noises, just walking through the door - at 3AM on New Year’s Day.

I’m concerned because we are renting and our tenancy agreement says that we can’t make noise after 11 PM (which I agree is reasonable). Can our neighbour, who is head of the  neighbourhood watch, get us in trouble with our letting agency or our landlord?

Your neighbour sounds like a nutjob! I would contact your letting agent and ask if previous tenants have had any problems with this guy and let them know what's going on. That way if he does try and complain to them they will have been forewarned.  You could also try talking to the neighbours on the other side of him and see if he is like this with them too.

Or, you could stick some earplugs through their mailbox. 

I'd love to know how this guy would get on with 4 houseloads of performing arts students in the road coming home singing broadway showtunes at 4am, like we have.


I suspect he's just overly sensitive to noises so he notices the slightest little thing. I think people sometimes forget that living so close to each other means being careful about noise AND tolerance of other people's noise in the same measure.

As a suggestion, if you're of a mind to bother (not sure I would be, depends on how annoying his moaning is), you can get draft excluding strips which, when fitted to your door frame, could reduce the noise of the door closing?

Or, you could stick some earplugs through their mailbox. 

I like your thinking!


Sorry about the situation Sweetpeach... ESPECIALLY since you just moved in.  If you think he is reasonable, pehaps the four of you could sit down and have a discussion?  

Perhaps you don't need to worry too much yet -- he's only come by to see you once about "your" noise, is that right? Maybe that will be the end of it. Definitely try not to worry too much about making ordinary noise in your own house, I don't see how you could get in trouble for that. If he is that sensitive to noise then probably your landlord and everyone else already knows this.

To be fair, he is right that sometimes noise carries in weird ways. I lived in a flat where when I closed my bedroom door, it made almost no noise to me, but it was really loud in my flatmate's room for some reason. There's not a lot you can do about it unless some kind of buffers will help.

COPD is a horrible disease and probably he is having a hard time dealing with it, and maybe his obsession with noise is his way of trying to have some control in the situation, or do something useful.

But regardless, you aren't doing anything wrong and hopefully it won't become a major issue. You might want to keep notes of all your conversations with him, however, in case it becomes an issue in future.

Good luck!!

Or maybe ask him if you can go round to his while your husband closes the door at various strengths to gauge the noise? You can explain it on the lines that you need to know how drastic an action you need to take (sound proofing vs changing the door) etc.

This will (a) show willing and (b) give you a chance to hear for yourself how loud it is. It might be as simple a case as just leaving the bathroom door open at night.


Edit: YOUR husband, not his 

Or maybe ask him if you can go round to his while his husband closes the door at various strengths to gauge the noise? You can explain it on the lines that you need to know how drastic an action you need to take (sound proofing vs changing the door) etc.

This will (a) show willing and (b) give you a chance to hear for yourself how loud it is. It might be as simple a case as just leaving the bathroom door open at night.

This sounds like a really good idea. Then you can find out for your self how loud it really is. It would also be good back up just in case he continues to complain. Then he can't say you didn't try.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

Actually, it's his wife who says she is being kept up (she's the one with COPD), so he might have not heard anything at all, and just been acting as his wife's messenger.

I made a mistake. Theirs isn't the last house in the row. It's the one on the other side of me, so they have neighbours on both sides, so they might have heard the neighbours on their other side and thought it was us.

My sister even suggested that someone opened and closed a car door outside and she got confused.

The thing is, we have been here for over 3 weeks, and he only complained once, and we didn't do anything diferently that night than any other night. We just went to sleep


By the way, I have asthma and while I haven't had a bad attack in years, I understand what it's like to be up all night coughing, choking and making myself throw up.


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When we moved into a block of flats a few years ago, about a week after we moved in the neighbour below us introduced himself to my husband as 'Hi, Im the unfortunate bastard that lives below you' and then went on about how much noise we were making walking around at night!!!  There were also several occassions where he'd come up, knock on our door and ask us to turn our music down, but it was actually the lady above us. I'm so glad to be out of there now and in a detached house!!! Grrrrr. It felt like we were constantly walking on eggshells with him! We even nicknamed him 'grumpy old man who lives downstairs'

He's definitely OTT.

I've got a drug dealing loser downstairs from us who started having house parties every single night with music so loud my 13-month-old son woke up at 3AM.

Oh, and fights breaking out in the corridor and communal area outside (I called the cops on that one).

He'd give the keys to drunken mates who'd blast the CDs and sing at the top of their lungs at midnight.

And fighting.  Fighting.  Every night.

He's definitely OTT.

I've got a drug dealing loser downstairs from us who started having house parties every single night with music so loud my 13-month-old son woke up at 3AM.

Oh, and fights breaking out in the corridor and communal area outside (I called the cops on that one).

He'd give the keys to drunken mates who'd blast the CDs and sing at the top of their lungs at midnight.

And fighting.  Fighting.  Every night.

So sorry to hear about your problems with neighbors.  I lived in a similar apartment building once, and it's not only inconvenient, but scary.

Sweetpeach, I agree your neighbor is OTT.  I'm on the verge of putting some earplugs through the mail slot of my next door neighbor 'cause she is plain and simple a nut job as well.  Cursing and banging the walls when I play my harp *quietly* in the afternoon on a weekend is unacceptable.  Deal with it.

Oh come on Andee, we know what you harpists are like, banging out the greatest hits of Deep Purple. 

So sorry to hear about your problems with neighbors.  I lived in a similar apartment building once, and it's not only inconvenient, but scary.

Sweetpeach, I agree your neighbor is OTT.  I'm on the verge of putting some earplugs through the mail slot of my next door neighbor 'cause she is plain and simple a nut job as well.  Cursing and banging the walls when I play my harp *quietly* in the afternoon on a weekend is unacceptable.  Deal with it.

How about you swap with our next door neighbor? That way she could randomly hammer walls at 2am, annoy your neighbor (who could then curse and hammer back) and we could all enjoy the lovely harp music.

Oh come on Andee, we know what you harpists are like, banging out the greatest hits of Deep Purple. 

I do have a lovely version of Stairway to Heaven that I play! 

How about you swap with our next door neighbor? That way she could randomly hammer walls at 2am, annoy your neighbor (who could then curse and hammer back) and we could all enjoy the lovely harp music.

Perfect! 

Yeah, I've been in the same situation as you WHW and Andee.  In fact, twice in the same building.  The owners who had it when I moved in rented to some pretty dodgey people, but sold the building within a half a year of me moving in.  We had a woman across the hall who would throw crack parties and almost burnt the place down when she left a pan on the stove with a lit burner and went out.  The new owners got rid of them but a few years later decided to sell the building.  To fill it up for sale, he became less than careful with the checks on residents.  Again we had drug dealers right next to us.  Horrible.  We found human feces in the hallway.

I left at that point.  The new landlords said they were going to clean the place up, but I wasn't going to stick around waiting for that day, especially after they busted open the front door so they didn't have to get buzzed in to get to their dealer.

But back to the OT, I hope you can work something out with the woman.  It's not good to feel like you're walking on eggshells in your own home.

ETA: I forgot, best of luck to you WLH getting them out of there/to calm down/finding some sort of way out.  I know it was hard enough for the landlords in that building I lived in to get rid of the problem tenants.  It took many months.  In the meantime, those of us who were just looking to enjoy our homes felt insecure, were constantly kept awake/woken up, and were subjected to other hazards we needn't have been.