What have been your experiences with neighbours and noise?

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Good or bad, considerate or inconsiderate, easily resolved problems or a persisting nuiscance?

Do you have difficulty coping or have you learned to manage? What have you done to resolve any issues, or have you so far found that impossible?

What have your experiences been with anti-social neighbours in general, and how much of a role do you think your ASD has played (or not played) in shaping your perspective of them? In what way (if any) do you feel your life is affected by such things, in comparison to NTs?

At what point can you draw a line between tolerable and intolerable? And what are your views on the acceptability, or even the legality, of crossing that line? Should more be done within society to prevent such behaviour? If so, what? Or do you feel that there are already too many restrictions on what a person is allowed to do in their own home?

A lot of questions!

I read the term "social contract" in another thread a few moments ago, hadn't seen the term for a while and it set my mind in motion and made me wonder. A lot of people break this contract, whether ignorant of it or all too aware of its intrusiveness. Quite a fair number of those with ASD have strong opinions regarding these kinds of things, personal space, what people should or shouldn't do etc. Noise seemed like a good gateway to enter into a discussion of AS views on the social contract in general.

NT views would also be interesting to hear, for contrast.

I have a neighbor that revs his harley motorcycle all hours of the night. Highest activity is 3am-5am. The man must be sleeping all day to be able to be up all night or taking some serious drugs. There are also strange people coming and going all hours. I am a light sleeper so it bothers me. If I wake up in the night it can take hours to fall back to sleep. It is annoying but I deal with it. What else can I do? I believe in what you do within your own home is your own business so I would be opposed to limiting his right to do what he does-it is just a bad combo with my insomnia.

most communities have bylaws governing the volume of noise permitted between certain hours. There are also laws against using a rental property (if it is one) as a business. People coming and going at all hours suggests drugs or prostitution.

Both are items you may wish to look into. They usually do a darn good job of maintaining secrecy about the complainant. (And i don't usually believe in the system)

It's definitely drugs, neither he nor most of the "visitors" have any teeth.

Having neighbors next door and across the street here where I live now is only a problem when they are doing fireworks bombs and bottle rockets and things like that, but I once told a landlord my wife and I would be moving very soon unless he evicted the people in the apartment above us and got somebody much quieter in there. I had called the police more than once, and one time that even resulted in an arrest on the back stairs! Overall, I cannot stand being surrounded by much more than the sound of a TV or radio and an occasional car passing by on the street.

I did have a neighbour who would play the same Brittany cd for 12 hours a day for weeks at a time.. Recently the next door neighbours vacuum cleaner is the right/wrong sound to almost send me catatonic

I live in a house in a quiet area.. Neighbours and noise, what's that?

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I have neighbours and noise. I cope with noise very badly and always have a worry that I am going to lose my temper and say or do something hugely inappropriate, which would make the situation worse. The law (Environmental Protection Act here) is woolly and there are no enforcement officers, but the local authority will take a complaint through to the district court under local planning legislation.

In general, people can make "reasonable" noise during either the working hours appropriate to their activity, or within the terms of their planning consent - builders can build from 9-5, road-works can work at night, restaurants and bars during evenings etc. There is no out-of-hours inspector so you need to record / photograph / diary examples of noise and write a complaint in office hours. You have to attempt to resolve all complaints informally first (maybe they don't know they are offensively noisy), but police might visit if it so noisy that it is likely to cause a breach of the peace.

You could check your own building's contract if the noise is from co-tenants, then the local authority, the local police, national law and environmental protection law. (Some links to UK and US law in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_pollution)

Umm I live in an apartment now so I hear a lot of sex or ass whoopins.

I live in a rural area & I do have neighbors that are close but I barely even see my neighbors. About the only problem I have is my neighbors on one side sometimes have family things & make a lot of noise or they sometimes put on rap music

I don't have any issues with my neighbours. Most of them are seniours and they don't make much noise. I do have issues with the school and kids walking by, making ignorant noises.

My neighbor across the street has this loud German Shepherd. I get up early in the morning to walk my dog before going to work. I work in DC. I can hear her dog barking like crazy as I pass by her house. I can't see the dog at all so clue where she is. The dog is out of control! She goes nuts on the leash when she sees other dogs. My Westie just ignores her. Also one 4th of July this neighbor had fireworks going after 10pm. I mean it was a work day the next day. I know in some counties fireworks are illegal. I can't stand the noise! I dread 4th of July. I mean to have the fireworks go off so late at night My other neighbors are fine.

I had neighbours who thought we were the noisy ones. They never, ever stopped complaining. It reached the point where I thought I was going to have nervous breakdown because of them. The bloke was quite scary and intimidating. Here are some of the things they complained about:

- my daughter playing music in her bedroom too loudly. I can't stand her music so if I can hear it she has to turn it down. I was in the same house and could hear nothing. The lady on the other side could hear nothing either. Her bedroom window was open and if you stood outside the front of his house you could just about hear it. You couldn't hear it in the garden. Or inside.

- my husband starting his car on the drive to go to work at 6.30am. Apparantly this makes him antisocial.

- my dogs barking. I can understand this, if it were a problem but I am home all day and my dogs sleep all day apart from doing what dogs do and barking at the postman and when someone knocked on the door. He called the council noise people out about this. When they saw what my dogs were like, they told me to ignore the neighbours as they were clearly mad. The other neighbour said she very rarely heard the dogs.

And my 2 favourites:

- they would hammer on the wall in anger if my dog played with his dog toy that squeaked. Yes, apparantly squeaky dog toys during the day are antisocial. Squeak, thump! Squeak, thump!

- my husband shovelled snow too loudly and was disturbing their peace. WTF!

I never really had a problem with neighbors but the only time I did was then the people in the duplex next to us kept locking the car over and over again. It was making me have a meltdown. Those people eventualy got busted for posession of illegal drugs and moved away. There used to be a little boy and whenever he was wating for the schoolbus or home from school you knew it. I had more trouble with the noises of my own neices and nepphews and even my own brother who would crank up his music just to annoy me.

Bad and a persisting nuisance. Though no truly antisocial neighbours.

When we moved in here (in 4th floor), most of the people here were old. 4 out of 8 apartments in the staircase had pensioners (or close to that age). There were kids in 1st floor and teens beside us but none of them were screamers and none were very noisy. We hardly heard them at all and never for long.

About 15-19 years ago there were a family here with 3 girls, and these kids seemed to run up and down the stairs all day. That was a bit annoying, but way worse was the fact that all 3 had their bikes in front of the mailboxes instead of in the basement as the rules say. About 24-22 years ago I occasionally parked my bike there if I knew I was going out after dinner. Each time I came down after supper, I would find the bike thrown (and I do mean thrown) down the basement. But these bikes were never treated that way, despite the fact they were *always* there, while mine was only there a few times, and despite the fact that I always put it closer to the door so people could get to their mailboxes while these stood right in front of the boxes so half the people there couldn’t get to their mail without removing them, just another proof that I get harassed where no one else does. Needless to say I ploughed my way through the bikes with the same consideration those girls used when they put them there. The two oldest were the same age I had been when my bike was there, so there was no excuse.
Once when my mother and I were down the basement cleaning up in the cellar storage room, these 3 brats were coming down there 3 or 4 times. They weren’t picking something up or delivering anything, they were just satisfying their curiosity. 3 or 4 times! Forcing their way through all the stuff we tried to go through while gawking like crazy, then stop at the corner, whisper and giggle, then return the same way. Again 3 or 4 times, without having a reason to be there! I think that’s f***ing unbelievable! If I had been curious like that I would’ve just gone down there, stood by the door and taken a careful look, trying to not be a PITA. After the 3rd or 4th time I snapped and said “Enough now!” which made my mother snap “Skilpadde!” in a warning. Yeah right I was the one who behaved badly. Yeah right! Bleeep the world!! ! There was never a problem if anyone ‘corrected’ me for doing anything, but heaven forbid that I should do the same and expect the same courtesy! It always seems like I’m being kept to another standard and I don’t put up with that!

At the same time a family with 2 kids, one boy, one girl, lived in the 1st floor. These kids weren’t a personal nuisance but they were a nuisance. They were crying all the time, and whenever they weren’t actually crying, they were speaking in the whiniest voices imaginable. I have never met kids appearing that whiny before or after.
One time they were on vacation. One day we heard a car and then as soon as the door opened, crying and whining. “Those in first floor have returned,” my mother said, then giggled and added, “No, that was a bad thing to say”. She went out on the veranda and guess who came home?
And their mother was a bi**h. Their dog escaped his leash in the garden several times and when we delivered him back, the hag was annoyed that we bothered her with something so insignificant. When I was 15 and running down the stairs on my way to school, she one day complained that I woke her up. But all the racket of her kids and the other brats here weren’t a problem, just me running up and down twice a day? I snapped “If you’re asleep at eight o clock it might be time to get up anyway!” It wasn’t just the fact that I was so little bother compared to them that got to me, it was also that condescending way she talked to me. When she got angry, I slipped her a go to hell and left.

When we moved in here, a female pensioner lived under us. She seemed nice at first, and she even told my mother she shouldn’t be too strict with me if I got loud, cause it was so nice to have kids in the stairs. Then we got a dog and after that she heard every breath we took and complained about everything. Whenever someone was boring or hammering nearby she’d phone us to tell us to stop it (in 99% of the cases it wasn’t us. There was some boring after we moved in to put up closets etc, but never outside of the allowed hours, and once everything was in place I don’t think the bore was used once a year even. Yet she kept calling us whenever such a sound was heard for about 3 years). When it rained in on her veranda, she complained that our puppy had urinated and that the urine had run down to her veranda! Our dog was housebroken and the door to that side was always closed because we stored things there. At one point she claimed I had thrown a toy down and that it had left a mark on her window. WTF?! I never threw down any toy, nor would I even have been able to throw it down and into her veranda. So we “enjoyed” 3 years of that.
Then one day when I was 11, the rain was pouring down and it was a bit of thunder. My mother and I had planned on just having fun that day and for once she bought a chocolate for us to enjoy in the middle of the week and we were gonna enjoy it and play board games. I was looking forward to it. We had just sat down with the game when the door bell rang. It was the hag from downstairs. She asked if my mother could come down and keep her with company until the thunder was over. The witch was terrified of thunder and usually she’d be with the woman living next to her (also a hag) but she wasn’t home. So could my mother come down and sit with her in the storage room? I couldn’t f***ing believe it when my pushover mother did. After all the s**t that bi**h did to us she left our fun-play-day to sit hold that hag in the hand. I felt so betrayed. I never would’ve done that. I’d laugh in her face and slam the door.
But not my mother of course. Strangers and acquaintances always seem more important to her that her daughter. Yeah, I know she doesn’t really feel that way, but often she *acts* like it. And it pi**es me off every time. Okay, this wasn’t really about noisy neighbours but about neighbour trouble.
The witch tried to bribe me with chocolate later on, needless to say it didn’t work.

After this hag died in 2007 the apartment stood empty for a long time. At easter 2008 a new family, a man, a pregnant live in partner and a daughter. And we haven’t had much peace since. The man (probably) have been boring and hammering since he moved in. The first year I think they did bore or hammer or saw every day, including Sundays (not allowed), excluding Christmas because they were gone then. From as early as 7 o clock in the morning on a Sunday, and as late as 22. And they do a lot of it still. Their kids seem to be running back and forth nonstop from they get up to they leave for nursery, then again until they go to sleep. One of them cries all the time, every day and goes on for more than half an hour once he/she starts and easily restarts. They seem to be dropping things at the floor all the time. All of that would be annoying as hell. But just before Christmas -08, the rectum of a man there was at our door. My mother was at work and my father had gone to bed; it was about half an hour to midnight. The only apparatus that was on here, was the computer (and the freezer and fridge). Nothing else. After seeing who it was, i opened the door. Then this rectum claims that they couldn’t sleep because of something was making a noise from our apartment. He said it sounded like a floor sander. Yeah the only person I have ever known to use such a thing is him! And the stairs were full of dust on 3rd floor when they used it. A-hole! Nothing was on here and I said that. After having to repeat it several times (maybe the ahole didn’t believe me because I looked at the wall instead of glaring into his eyes, IDK), he finally left. I showed my feelings by slammed the door shut. I haven’t greeted them since.
Their washing machine is on until midnight, and it must be an old model, cause we hear it better than our own! The sound itself doesn’t bother me, but because it’s their washing machine, it annoys me and I have to pull myself together each time to not go down there and complain.
Add to that their grill. In summers they have it on the veranda, and we have to close the windows and veranda door because of the smoke. It gives me asthma attacks and makes my eyes hurt. My mother reacts violently to it as well.
Those grills should be forbidden.


As for coping, I don’t really. It grinds on me every time it happens, making me angry and in a foul mood. I make sure I make noise when I can, hoping it will annoy them. I don’t go out of my way to do it, but I allow things to fall to the floor if they’re about to fall, and sometimes I push them on purpose or make the chair screech against the floor or put things down hard when they’re home. (and believe me, I hear whether or not they’re home.)

As for my ASD’s role, this is the difference between my mother, my father and me:
All 3 of us are annoyed with the bleeps on 3rd floor. None of us like them, we all think they are nothing but racket, and we all have said things like I hope they’ll move and they are not ones to talk about noise.
I ignore the rectums completely. If any of them were to ever try to complain to us again, I’d snap and tell them exactly what I think about them in very clear words.
My father keeps greeting them if they pass him closely, but he’s always short with them (actually he usually is short with people) and he doesn’t play phony with their brats.
My mother smiles and greets them and even makes nauseating phony bott-bott sounds to their brats, despite not liking them and despite the fact that she hates kids just a little less than I do. That phoniness is even lower than rectum-ness IMO.

So to me it seems like we all react pretty much the same way to the noise, but the difference for us is whether or not we show that to the people responsible.


There have been 2 dogs in the stairs that barked a lot when alone, one still lives here. That has never bithered me, I have an angle's patience with animals, I just pity the dog who have problems being alone.


Kra17, I envy you!

I live in the city in an open apartment complex with 16 units by the hospital and a few fast food joints.


One neighbor has a 10 month old always screaming.

Another frequently is having sex next the window. the girlfriend is LOUD to say the least and they like BDSM.

The ambulances and mercy helicopter and traffic are all hours of the day and night.

Fast food place stinks... as does the bar.

another neighbor has friends over and watching movies and plays music early into the morning.

We have 2 garbage trucks that clunk past the apartment before 9 am every day!

And the homeless have taken up the habit of playing recorders when they are not dumpster diving.

I try to use earplugs, but I don't like the pressure in my ears from them. I keep a fan running in my window to block out the smaller noises. That took a while to get used to because the fan noise usually bothers me and if the blades go slow enough I can't help watching them. I also HATE air blowing on me, so I have it set up to blow at the wall now. I leave during peak traffic/frying time at the fast food places. Otherwise, I can't think of much else to do. The police or property manager doesn't respond to any of my complaints.


As for anti-social neighbors.... I got one that is downright rude to me and avoids me. But only me. Not to anyone else in the complex. I try not to let it bother me, but wtf!?!?!