Downstairs neighbour. I am looking for advice

[Saluki]

Hi all.

I am looking for a bit of advice here as I am at the end of my tether now and about to go out for a long bike ride to get out of the flat.
Our downstairs neighbour says that we are being unreasonably noisy and that we disturb her all the time.
She complained about the noise the day we moved in. We were moving in for pity's sake, its tricky to do silently.
She complained when we hoovered. So we now only hoover when she is out.

I should say that she works nights and is abed by 5pm. She wakes us up most mornings between 12.30am and 2am. We have checked with the local council and they say that we can make 'reasonable noise' from 7am to 11pm and that as a night worker she has little in the way of rights about us living our lives.

She says that she can hear the TV so we have it on really quietly with the subtitles on.
She says she can hear us talking so we whisper to each other.
She complained that our using our garden, at 6pm out enjoying the sun, disturbed her and was really grumpy so we went in and we haven't used the garden or done gardening when she is home since.
We never play our guitars after 6pm.
The dogs walk about and disturb her. I have looked into 'levitation for dogs' but cannot find a copy anywhere so can't teach them that one.
The dogs woof when someone comes to the door sometimes - not all the time though, just occasionally, and it disturbs her.
She complains when our dogs go into our garden in case they hurt her cats, so the dogs don't go in the garden now.
We don't play the radio when she is home.


Today I lost it with her, a bit. I told her that trying to be silent when she is home is making me ill. I haven't worked much this last week or so as I am so stressed out. I keep dropping my scissors and can barely speak on the phone.
I decided to make a point and asked her if she could hear our music (We set the hi-fi up yesterday evening but didn't turn it on until 10am today while she was out) and she said that we played it really loudly.
We asked if she could hear us playing AC/DC and she said that it disturbed her often. My ex hubby stole all my rock music and a new (to us) AC/DC cd arrived today. Its the only one we have. We asked about AC/DC just so we could see if she was making stuff up.

Ken (hubby) then said "sorry if we disturbed you playing our guitars until gone 9pm last night". She said that she was disturbed and that she knocked on several times but we were being so loud that she couldn't make herself heard. We have electric guitars, apparently. I'm looking across at them now and they are still acoustics, they haven't morphed in to a pair of Les Paul Customs or owt.
Last night we were at a guitar lesson. We left the house at 6.30pm and didn't get back in until gone 10pm. Yup we played loud (learning Back to Black at the mo) but we were 12 miles away in Norwich. That woman must have ears like a bat.

She's now been around ranting (really ranting) that we have made noise all day. We told her through the week that we were decorating and laying new flooring today. She's had 4 days warning. We have to do it all in one hit as we have a 4' fish tank and a 2'8" fish tank. Its all done now. We started at 9 - while she was out and we finished everything by 3.45pm and then walked the dogs but its disturbed her.

Am I being unreasonable. We are living like Anne Frank, I am on the verge of a breakdown. I am here quietly, listening to music on my iPod, with headphones

Just been downstairs and she said that she can here the 'effing Manic Street effing Preachers'. She banged so hard on the door it set next door's dogs off too. If she can hear the Manic's while I am listening to Thunder on my iPod she must have bionic ears and picking up someone else's music.

Advice please, anyone?
Oh, we cannot move until May 13th 2014. We've looked at that route. We have considered buying a touring caravan and going back homeless but we don't really want to do that as we waited a long time for any sort of housing and Ken is on dialysis so its not practical.

Sorry for long post but I thought that I would type up the situation reasonably fully.

 

[Buzzinonbikes]

Sounds like an awful halfbreed. Don't get yourself down about it. She sounds like she needs to get out more.

 

[KEEF]

Get a very large PA system lie speakers face down on floor, pipe your hi-fi through it put in a heavy metal cd. Switch cd player to repeat press play and retire to the Lake District for a week. That will give her a reason to complain.


It works believe me!

 

[Saluki]

I am torn between embracing my private education and refusing to be riled by the lower classes (My mother's pet phrase) or embracing my inner 10 year old and dancing about in the living room to something properly loud.
Then again, there is my inner bitch......

The flat across the way is rocking out on his electric guitar. He's really good. I can hear it with all the windows shut. I am going to sit on the grass in the forbidden garden to listen. I wonder if he'll turn it up a bit.

 

[Profpointy]

Sounds like the noises are in her head frankly, so either she's loopy or just nasty. Choice is either tell her to fark off, or "just" ignore her. Wisest is probably the latter, especially you own the flat, as you don't want a 'dispute' when you sell.

There is no point really discussing it, as any "issue" is imagined, or simply not the point - seeking attention perhaps.

Not fun though - but try and treat her as "force of nature" type annoyance just like wind or rain or whatever, rather than an actual person to be reasoned with, and it may be less upsetting.

 

[Spinney]

Sounds like SHE should be done for harassing you.

What does she actually do when she complains? Come round and bang on the door? It looks like you are going out of your way to give in to her, and she just gets more unreasonable.

Just act normally. Walk normally, talk normally, let your dogs in the garden (if they frighten her cats, she needs to keep her cats indoors). Etc. Giving in hasn't worked, stop trying...

 

[fossyant]

Silly bat. What's her age ? Tell her to do one !

 

[classic33]

Get in touch with Enviromental Health at your council and ask them how/where you stand on this. Also contact your landlord & ask the same question. Unreasonable Behavior might just be in the terms of her lease, with a bit of luck.
Keep a log of the nature of her complaints, detailing what her complaint was about, when & how often. Also keep records of any noise that she makes, that interferes with what you want to do. This would include any hammering/banging on the doors, walls or ceiling. The latter enviromental health will tell you to do anyway, for about six weeks in order to prove a pattern & that its not a one off report.
You mention guitars being played, do you have access to a sound meter?
Final point, for now. What are her cats doing in your garden? Inform her in writing, that you will be using YOUR garden to exercise YOUR dog on a daily basis & that you will not be held responsible for anything that her cats cause.

 

[Pale Rider]

I'm afraid the bad news is this is unlikely to sort until one of you move.

Making the best of a bad job, do as classic says (above).

Do you have carpets?

If you don't, it may count against you should someone from environmental health try to mediate.

 

[Saluki]

We have tried 'over-baking' and taking her buns, cake, cherries etc and she thought that was wonderful, then left us a snotty note through my door because someone put dog poo in her bin when the bins were on the pavement on bin day.

I have tried being nice and reasoning with her but to no avail. Ken says how would she be if we had a couple of kids running about up there?
He said that if someone lived here from Abbey Hulton or Bentilee (2 large council estates with reputations) who just told her to eff off the whole time that things would be better. We think that she is being such a cow because we are nice, decent people.

We hear her talking to her chap about us, when she's in the garden (her garden) and she is effing and jeffing about us the whole time. We are nice people even though we "Show off the whole time on your effing bike". Or as anyone else would put it, go for a ride on our bikes. We have gone over and above trying to be quiet so as not to disturb her but we just cannot win.

We don't own this flat. We applied to a housing association, they interviewed us and offered us this (after a goodly while of bidding whilst living in a small static caravan). We don't want her to continually whinge to them and get us thrown out. She won't say that we are walking about at 7pm, she will use a more emotive phrase of "When I am trying to sleep" without mentioning a time.

We go out a lot.
We help at Alpha on a Monday, and help at a church group on a Wednesday. I visit friends often on Tuesdays and Thursdays or I go for a long bike ride. Friday we have guitar lessons in the city and Sunday we are out all day with church, cycling, geocaching, seeing friends etc. We often work on a Saturday but in the evenings I try to go for a ride or take the dogs to a friends so we don't make noise.
I am paying £92 a week for a flat that I sleep in (kind of). We spend less than 8 hours a day in this home or she whinges. We have told the housing association but her complaining about us making 'reasonable' noise, just normal living, is not seen as an issue.

 

[vernon]

Live your normal life.

Give her a noise diary and a tape recorder plus the address of environmental health and tell her to take the gathered evidence there as they are the only ones who will take action.

 

[ianrauk]

What a horrible situation to be in.
And not feeling able to use your own garden?
Well fark that and the horrible old witch, it's YOUR garden. Use YOUR garden and let your dog in YOUR garden.
It's up to her to keep her cat's out of the way.
As someone else has said. Ignore and just live your life.
It's up to her to prove if you are being unreasonable or noisy.

 

[Flying Dodo]

Point out the massive discrepancies between what she says she hears and what you actually have up there. I'd politely point out that it's clear she's making things up, and that you'd like her to stop harassing you.

 

[Andrew_P]

I would definitely make a complaint to the landlord about her verbal complaints, swearing and also making things up. No doubt she did this to the previous tenants as well, so with any luck they will just ignore her. Is the whole block housing association?

 

[Saluki]

I'm afraid the bad news is this is unlikely to sort until one of you move.

Making the best of a bad job, do as classic says (above).

Do you have carpets?

If you don't, it may count against you should someone from environmental health try to mediate.

There were carpets when we moved here, we asked the association to leave them, but they had all black mould on them and it was making my asthma play up. We have nice cushion flooring now (carpets went to the dump at 4.30pm this afternoon, they were still down at lunchtime). It has a membrane, underlay thing and we wear slippers which go on our feet as soon as we get in the front door. The stairs have carpet. There has never been a carpet in either of the bedrooms though. They are floorboards and we keep the doors shut when we are out so the dogs can't get in and walk about in them.
Our elderly Saluki is getting a bit incontinent and can't always get through the night. Cushion flooring is practical. Either that or we could just top him to save the carpets. As he is still full of life at the moment, that seems a bit drastic and I am not sure that I could live with myself. He's not long for this earth anyway. I doubt that he will see Christmas this year.

We have acoustic guitars. If I am practicing in the office/music room, Ken cannot hear me in the living room some 12' away if I shut the door. When her car is there, I practice really quietly and never ever after 6pm. Our upstairs neighbours - next door and their flat adjoins ours - never hears us practice, never hears our TV and only occasionally do they hear our music and only when they are not playing their own. The upstairs neighbours are hippy types and kept us all awake all weekend but we have chatted with them and everything is hunky dory now, they just had a loud drunk friend around that one weekend.
The flats are converted semi detached houses with 4 flats in each block. All owned by the housing association, they have about 4 or 5 of these little blocks in our close.