# Very noisy neighbours / council house



## Thequiet1 (23 Dec 2009)

Hi there guy's, just looking for some information on the above title, any info would be greatly appreciated.

Basically we (wife and kids) moved into a council house back in early August and we had a couple move in next door who at the time seemed quite nice.
At the time it seemed they had no kids but they had a 3 bedroom house. For the first couple of weeks everything was fine, there was only the average house hold noise coming from both our houses. But as the weeks progressed the noise from the neighbours became excessive as in doors being slammed from 11pm onwards to upto 2am.
Then after 2 months their 2 kids moved in, and then gradually as the months progressed more and more people are coming up to them. Sometimes multiple cars are up to them every day and I have no doubt they are up to things that is against the law but that's none of my business. All I care about is getting some decent sleep which is a big isses at present.

These people are from a different country, Romania I'm guessing and I'm not being racist by any means but to me they seem like real low lives. 
They stay up late making noise most of the night and probably drinking and the 2 kids make their own way to school while these people get up at around 12pm each day as I can "hear" when they get up. They then go out, the kids come home from school with no adults home and then roam the freezing cold streets for hours til the adults come home. Basically they don't care what the kids do.

But my main question is there anything that can be done to have these ease off on the noise ?
In reality my/wife's marraige is very strained but all this as we have a new baby and are tired anyway but we get very little sleep and are working our lives around these people.
I was recently made redundant before we moved in to the new house and boy am I lucky as I used to be up at 5am for my 6am shift but that would be impossible in the current circumstances.

Some might ask, "can you approach and ask them to keep it down". Well as I said already they seem neck deep in crime and sometimes when I go out I see some local youths with the hoods up coming from their house so I'd rather not approach them for I don't know what retaliation could come back.

My wife and I are trying to keep it together til after the xmas at least so the kids can enjoy it but it's killing us. The main thing is the SLAMMING hard of doors til the early hours of the morning so if we are asleep we get woken and are awake for most of the night.

It's a council house, any suggestions on what can be done?

At the current stage we are on the verge of handing back the keys, but it's our home and we don't want to end up homeless and the house if fairly nice too, just a shame about the terrible neighbours 

Thanks


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## Caveat (23 Dec 2009)

Complain to the council? Ask to be moved?


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## Firefly (23 Dec 2009)

Ear plugs!


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## Thequiet1 (23 Dec 2009)

Thanks for the replies.

Complaining to the council, that is the obvious choice but like most irrating things I'm wondering if they can actually do anything. Another reason I didn't want to complain is as I said they seem to have some shady characters going in and out and if I do complain they will surely know it's me.
If I knew for sure the council would act on it then I'd do it no problem, but I'd just hate to make my situation worse.

Asking to be moved could take months or years even so it's not an option, we need a quick enought fix 

Earplugs, not an option at all. We have a young baby, need to hear when he's crying or if the other kids need us.


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## Firefly (23 Dec 2009)

Thequiet1 said:


> Earplugs, not an option at all. We have a young baby, need to hear when he's crying or if the other kids need us.


 
I'd recommend trying it - we had to for a short spell and could still hear the little one - we have one of those baby monitors


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## Buddyg (23 Dec 2009)

Report them to the Gardai for whatever schemes and scams they are up to. Good chance they might move on.


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## liaconn (23 Dec 2009)

I  agree, you should report them to the Guards. Apart from anything else, if they're into drug dealing (which is what it sounds like, I once had a similar scenario going on in a house beside me, people calling at all hours of the day and night) do  you really want your children growing up beside that?


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## Sue Ellen (23 Dec 2009)

You need to make an appointment to speak to your local community garda in confidence.  They may well be aware of the situation and be monitoring it already.

Emphasise your fear and that you want your complaint treated in the strictest confidence as you are fearful of any repercussions.

Ask their advice about dealing with the Council.  They should be used to this type of situation.

If you look at your local Council's website you may well be able to find information there yourself.  SDCC have [broken link removed] on their site.

There may well be some previous threads on this problem 

Best of luck with your endeavours.  Been there, done that with the noisy neighbours problem for many years so know the strain that it puts on everyone in the house.  Its particularly bad when young children are in a house.


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## shootingstar (24 Dec 2009)

would you consider sleeping with a TV on in your bedroom? I had this with a neighbour who was a friend of mine a few years back. I told her, her kids are making a racket but we kinda laughed it off alot of the time. I resorted to leaving my TV on at night in my room. It worked..


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## carpedeum (27 Dec 2009)

shootingstar said:


> would you consider sleeping with a TV on in your bedroom? I had this with a neighbour who was a friend of mine a few years back. I told her, her kids are making a racket but we kinda laughed it off alot of the time. I resorted to leaving my TV on at night in my room. It worked..



I can fully empathize with this as we went through it. The Gardai could do little. Two things we did. When they started taking parking spaces all day outside our semi-d, those of neighbours and ploughing up the green verges beside the curbs with their spacewagons, when notes pinned to windscreens were ignored, a few of us on the road got together and "moved" the cars! The second thing we did was when going to work at 7am after a sleep interrupted night , we set the Eircom phonewatch alarm to on and stuck some heavy metal on the stereo on repeat play at full blast. My daughter's Queens Of The Stone Age CD was particularly effective. 

They moved on. Note: this was a private house let through the Eastern Health Board. The absentee landlord learnt a lesson too. No trouble since. Polish and Latvian tenants were the best behaved.

One bit of advice, don't let it ruin your marriage. I know it's easier said than done.


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## Petal (28 Dec 2009)

Any chance you could dry-line the adjoining walls and put some soundproof material inbetween? (see here for example http://www.soundprooffoam.com/ ; http://www.pickapro.ie/sound-proofing)


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## onq (28 Dec 2009)

4 x 50Watt amps per room should do it.

http://www.marshallamps.com/product.asp?productCode=JVM215C

May I recommend:

First Week:
Queen - any album.
Cream's "Spoonful" [everything up]
Hendrix's Voodoo Chile [up even more]
Repeat.

Second Week:

Buy a Fender Electric Guitar
[broken link removed]
Practice.

Third Week:
Buy a Fender Electric Bass
[broken link removed]
Practice.

Fourth Week:
Buy a Professional Drum Kit.
[broken link removed]
Practice.

Fifth week:

You can stop now.
They'll have left, along with half the road.

HAND.

ONQ.

PS - Get the walls checked for structural cracks.


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## bartbridge (6 Jan 2010)

If the neighbours are living in a council house aswell then the housing department should do something about it, give them a call because it's surely a condition on their tenancy agreement that they do not cause disturbance to neighbouring properties.

We went through a similar situation aswell but it was a private landlord so we found the Gardai to be alot more helpful than the landlord. Hope it works out for ye soon.


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## Bronte (7 Jan 2010)

OP can't go down the landlord route as it's a council house. He needs to be very careful how he manages this as he doesn't want to become a target by them.

It's best if all complaints are confidential but Ireland is small. So he needs to start with a chat with the local community Garda as another poster pointed out, then calling out the Gardai every night when there is noise, complaining to the council every day if that's what it takes to get them to take action and complaining to the Health Board in relation to the neglect of the children. Enough hassle and they will move on. The problem is to get officialdom to act, but only by being persistent you will get the state to act. It might be helpful if all neighbours came together on this because otherwise you could become a target.

There was an interesting programme on this (neighbours from hell) on one of the British channels this week which will be on again next week I think.

It's a dreadful situation to be in my sympathies to you and your family.


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## Holtend82 (7 Jan 2010)

The best thing you can do is contact your local authority and inform them that you are keeping a notebook of your neighbours anti social indiscressions. Keep the book for a week or two writing down everything they do that is anti social. Once a local authority recieves a complaint about anti social behavour your will be asked to fill out an anti social behaviour complaint form, they then MUST investigate same. There is a good chance the council have had problems with these applicants and your log book of there indiscressions might just be enough for the council to give them a notice to quit.


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## Firefly (7 Jan 2010)

onq said:


> May I recommend:
> 
> First Week:
> Queen - any album.
> ...


 
House of Pain is your only man!


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## TreeTiger (7 Jan 2010)

from environ.ie:

"*Local Authority Tenants*: Noise nuisance and other problems caused by local authority tenants are also covered under legislation.  The tenancy agreement, which is the legal basis of the relationship between the local authority and its tenants, will generally contain provisions in relation to the type of behaviour that is acceptable, and that which is not. The local authority is empowered under Section 62 of the Housing Act 1966, to initiate proceedings to secure an eviction where a tenant has breached the conditions of the tenancy agreement.  
 Please contact your local authority if you have a complaint regarding the behaviour of one of their tenants."

Good luck.


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## Bronte (8 Jan 2010)

That quote is all very well in print, in reality getting the local authority to act is a different matter.  I'm sure there are statistics on the local authority evicting or dealing with problem tenants but I'd say they are few and far between.


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