Making Friends And Losing Them

[Guest Kennedy48]

Since getting the kitcar and working in the drive/garage iv only just realised how busy the street gets during the day with the neighbours. Working shifts Iv seen all times of the days working on the car. Neighbours iv never spoke to stop coming up asking questions, talking about things and saying how nice the car is. 5 minute job last an hour with people stopping.

Now

cars on the road. Got a few of the neighbours congratulating me. Waving at me and shouting finally, have fun, at me.

Tonight. My grandad came around at 8pm. Thought we'd try and tune it. The car was running 5 minutes and the guy across the road comes over an asks if we can turn the engine off. He's trying to watch tv in the front room. The cars not that loud. It was jst idling. I do agree that 8pm is start of the relaxing time and probably should be starting the quiet time.

Does anybody else have this problem. And what have/do you do about them. Obviously if I go out I go out in it but what's the deal with running the car for 5 mins before setting off abit later. Don't want to lose friends and be seen as the annoying guy with the loud car.

Cheers

luke

[Guest Peter Kelly]

Since getting the kitcar and working in the drive/garage iv only just realised how busy the street gets during the day with the neighbours. Working shifts Iv seen all times of the days working on the car. Neighbours iv never spoke to stop coming up asking questions, talking about things and saying how nice the car is. 5 minute job last an hour with people stopping.

Now

cars on the road. Got a few of the neighbours congratulating me. Waving at me and shouting finally, have fun, at me.

Tonight. My grandad came around at 8pm. Thought we'd try and tune it. The car was running 5 minutes and the guy across the road comes over an asks if we can turn the engine off. He's trying to watch tv in the front room. The cars not that loud. It was jst idling. I do agree that 8pm is start of the relaxing time and probably should be starting the quiet time.

Does anybody else have this problem. And what have/do you do about them. Obviously if I go out I go out in it but what's the deal with running the car for 5 mins before setting off abit later. Don't want to lose friends and be seen as the annoying guy with the loud car.

Cheers

luke

Hello Luke

Perhaps he should invest in double glazing. He is either very jealous or very sad.He can't be much of a friend if he complains about this. My closest neighbor is 300yards, makes me realise how lucky I am.

Pete

[speedtripledan]

Id tell him to do one 11:00 @ night fair point 8:00 he is the unreasonable one ...

[Guest MarkB]

i would ask him to turn the tv down so you can hear the engine

[Guest russell555]

remember you have a good barganing tool...... just say "if i can get it going properly do you fancy a quick spin".... always seems to soften any argument they have for some reason????

[fry61]

Think on, the light aircraft making a single pass adds to a warm summers day in the garden; the red baron going round & round his house is a PAIN. Same noise different duration & your neighbour doesn't know when you'll stop "circling" the engine so ask him if an engine test at XX.XX time is O.K

[Longboarder]

Let me present an alternative view. After all you can't legally stop me!

I found out early on in the build that some of my neighbours were not impressed with my building a kit car. They didn't want it to disturb their lives. We live in a quiet residential street and they wanted it to stay that way and couldn't see why they should have to live with an activity that made their lives less pleasant.

 

But I wanted to build a kit car. I was going to be angle grinding, hammering, sawing, bending brackets, drilling and making engine noise. I would be doing it evenings and weekends when they wanted to relax in their homes or gardens after work. There would inevitably be some disturbance for my neighbours with absolutely no benefit for any of them. I was going to be making their lives less pleasant for a couple of years. Their quiet time in the back garden lying in the sun would be accompanied by some noise from my angle grinder, etc, and there was nothing they could do about it. They would just have to live with an activity that made their lives less pleasant.

 

Thinking it through the gains were all mine. The losses were all theirs. Why would they be thrilled about it?

 

I personally feel that builders should take all steps they can to minimise the disturbance to their neighbours? Most of them will put up with some disturbance (and they will have to) without complaining but they will still be irritated by it. They will also have bad days at work, fights with the wife etc when they end up short tempered. On those days they will be more irritated by the noise and you are telling them that they just have to put up with it.

I do agree that 8pm is start of the relaxing time and probably should be starting the quiet time.

Your neighbour probably thinks that 6 o'clock when he gets home is the start of his relaxing time, not 8 o'clock. He might accept that he has to put up with the noise till 8pm if he is being reasonable.

The cars not that loud.

Is it the loudest car in the street? As a petrol head you may like that. Few neighbours will.

It was just idling.

Are you sure? No raising the revs at all during the tuning process you were doing? Or was it mostly idling with a bit of revving now and again to check the effect of the adjustments.

 

I think it might work wonders if you go out and buy carton of beers and a box of chocs and drop in on him this evening and say sorry and thank him and his family for putting up with being the neighbour of a kit car builder. Say you get carried away and forget the time sometimes and if in future he is being disturbed please to come across and say.

I did this with my immediate neighbours. Made everyone feel better I think. And I think has completely defused the situation.

 

Nigel

[Guest mower man]

Well said I don't have any real probs and do try to do the noisy work in the day time[i'm retired] we all get carried away esp when another 10 mins can see a job finished and you haven't realised it's getting late, but a quick visit to warn people there may be some disturbance goe's along way and the beer and chocs are agood idea!.mower man

[Guest Kennedy48]

Dont think il bother with buying them thing. Not that fused with staying friends. I had to put up with all his noise wen he first bought the house. He basically rebult the while thing. Early morning hammering, lorrys, builders. Was annoying but it's something he want to do.

To the only idleing. We only just started it up. Ran 5 minutes while we had are heads in the engine turning things. Never had the chance to rev it. Remember an old neighbour. Used to have a ln old porshe 911. Looked nice, sounded nice. He used to start the engine at 4:45am every morning. Was my alarm clock for my 5am wake ups. Never complained. Never bothered me. Sounded nice. It is a nice quiet street with different styles of houses and a church at the bottom. But the vicar spends most his day just standing watching my progress ad talking about back in the day. Just abit annoying when you feel the hated one but just yryin to keep the street in the food side

[Guest MarkB]

Most of my neighbours are brill, if they have aproblem they certainly don't tell me, if I work on the car at night its generally between 7 and 10, I have been up at 7, 8, 9 on a Sunday morning working on the car or house, I work a lot if hours and my neighbours appreciate that, 99% of my neighbours are over 60 and take a lot of interest in my car..... They probably prefer the engine noise to my kids screams.

[Guest The Modfather]

This is a good debate. And although I believe I am quite tolerant of my neighbours, are they so tolerant of me?

I too was grinding, drilling, cutting, swearing, banging etc etc all over the winter months, and thankfully none of my neighbours complained. Several were and still are very interested in my car rebuild, and have indeed helped me on a few occasions. Is this because they don't care about the noise, or is it because they feel that this minor inconvenience is just that, minor, and or short lived?

Would they spoil a relatively good neighbourly friendship of a small cul-de-sac with their complaining? Or is it because they don't want to fall out with a decent copper? Are they being decent by not complaining?

 

Personally I think it is down to how you interact with your neighbours overall. Luckily we do sometimes go for a meal with some of them, and they came to our wedding and we did theirs. Good neighbours are hard to come by in this day and age. I see it daily at work, people just don't have the neighbourly "love" that there used to be, unless that is you work on it, and give a little to them. It is easier for people to close their doors on their immediate community and live their lives in almost isolation from their neighbours.

 

Remember we cannot choose our neighbours, so to be friends with them is better than not being friends of them, or ignorant of their needs. Perhaps 8pm is too late for them. So ask him what he thinks is suitable, and perhaps come to an agreement. Ask the others as well.

 

Don't forget, you may just need to count on your neighbour one day!

[Big Jim]

Woh there everyone!!

 

I've been here, had two threatening letters from the Council stating that neighbours have complained about the noise. I called the council ready to give someone the biggest earful of all time. I spoke to a very nice chap from the council both times, the first time gave me all the information on the procedure they have to go through if someone makes a complaint.

 

If a neighbour makes a complaint to council about noise, the council send a letter to the person "responsible" for the noise, informing them that a complaint has been made and that it will be monitored, further action will be taken if deemed necessary.

He also said that providing that I'm not running a business from home that is responsible for the noise, I can make a reasonable amount of noise which includes, cutting ,welding ,grinding, running of engines etc. in fact everything one needs to do to build a kitcar or repair a car between 8-30am and 6-30pm, 6 days a week, with 1 hour later start time and 1 hour earlier finish time on a Sunday.

He also said that a letter is also sent to the complainant, stating that they must keep a log of the *noise events* ie dates & times (I think he said over a month)

When this complainants log is then returned to the council, they look at it and decide if there has been noise made, type of noise, and for how long per spell, if on a regular basis or not, and if it was out of reasonable hours. If they think that there is a problem, they will then organise part of their council team to monitor & measure the noise with a view to court action.

What he also said was that over 90% of initial complaints are binned as they don't stand up.

 

After getting a second similar letter some 12 months later, (after religiously sticking to the times stated) I called the council again, and told the council employee that I'd not gone out of the hours, that they should tell the silly old bint that was complaining just what I am allowed to do, and that any more complaints and I'd see my solicitor about harassment.

 

So, basically stick to making noise between 8-30am to 6-30pm, less on Sunday.

 

PS. Local councils may vary slightly on times.

[Guest Kennedy48]

Spoke to my dad earlier. He said when he was outside washing his car. The guy who complained to me waved and said good morning and spoke about the horrible weather. Hopefully that looks like it's not upset him too much and just got over it.

The thing you speak of on those times, would you not get a complaint when driving back home from a day out and getting in at 7pm. The roar of the engine while cruising up street.

An old neighbour of mine used to get visitors in the middle of the night. Friends turning up and shouting his name in the street til he came to the window. And have a full conversation shouting out the window. Now that got me really annoyed. Happened every night at one stage and for a couple of weeks. Could hear ever word, kept me a wake for an hour or so. Not good when at that stage I has to be up at 5am every morning. It's things like that, that annoy me. It must have annoyed the whole street but nothing was done. Then I turm an engine on and complaints start coming out.

[Al Milton]

Another slant on this is the eye for an eye scenario. If you have 'noisy' neighbours who insist on:

 

Thrashing the guts out of their Scooby (with one of the 'performance' exhausts) when they pull away, or

 

Doing the hoovering at 10pm even after being reminded of the time of night, or

 

Taking the works van to the maximum revs when leaving or arriving from work at ALL hours, or

 

Insisting on revving their motorbikes excessively (for no apparent reason) with an obvious illegal aftermarket exhaust when you have finished a 12 hour night shift

 

Then I say what goes around comes around, within reason of course officer

[Guest The Modfather]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi