The Annoying, Backyard-Enjoying, Hates Old Junks & Anything Involving Noise, Neighbor

2 words.........Muff Dive.....

 

i wouldnt even give her the paper, let her find her own, by doing that you will probably just piss her off even more. i know my niehghbors can jump on my shit for at least half of the things i own and or do. i shut it all down at 8pm and on the weeknd normally dont go out to the garage till about 10. i have to live here. think if you piss her off and she cant do much to you, she might move o nto the home owner that you rent from. shit rolls down hill.

 

Make sure you ventilate the compressor if you box it in.....you have no clue how much heat they create until it`s too late.....

 

FUCK THAT BITCH! if your within the written law let your get over it. the asshole that lives next to me calls the county all the time and makes up some bullshit and then when the dude(steve) comes by he usually just shoots the breeze quick walk-around and splits. the dumbest thing anyone can do is live somewhere the is a HOME-OWNERS ASSOCIATION! come over to my house and try to tell me to stop doing something and you will wish you never got up that morning. STAND YOUR GROUND DUDE!

 

She's not going to bother with you. She's going to go after the property owner and he very well may not even want to deal with this. You'd be best served by working something out with her if possible.

 

there are alot of regulations on what you can and can't do regarding cars, i wouldn't get too cocky about being within the noise limits of where you are. she can make sooooooooo many problems for you, your renting a garage and working on cars in it, in a residential area

stick to the advice like move the compressor, soundproof, lie low, apease her....the flip side is she could call in several organizations to harass you, fine you, and shut you down altogether

good luck

 

you should be able to look up every city`s ordinances on the internet BTW.......just do a google.

 

Billy, PMed you

 

So I spoke with my landlord today to inform him of the issue.

BTW my landlord is real cool with what we do in there, he had a 62? Stude, blew it up and dumped a Mccollugha sp? blown 289 in. Jacked the ass up and street raced as a kid.

He didn't seem alarmed at all and informed me that the neighbor is in fact also a tenant. He is good friends with the actual owner of the house. So now this turns even more in my favor because the playing field is now a bit more level. He was very appreciative that I informed him of what was going on, and seemed pleased by the changes. So far so good.

 

Lot of informing going on here no?

 

Man you are way out of line. Its a residential area and people have a right to expect not to have to put up with someone running a body repair shop next door in the weekend. Its attitudes like yours that fuck it up for the guy wanting to do the occasional job on their car.

I'll bet with a little effort she can fuck you up totally. If you were next to me and started carrying on about your rights etc I'd be talking to IRS, workplace safety people, local council until your life was as miserable as you are making hers.

Do the work in a proper shop in a approved area.

 

I guess those four kids don't make any noise. Yah, right. But still, the problem is you don't own the place you are working in. I wouldn't want a non-resident coming around making noise either. sorry, but I have to side with her. Maybe better to look for a rental garage that is in an industrial or rural area.

 

Dude, can your attitude. Billy's not doing anymore work in his garage than anyone of us is doing. The only difference is that he's making a few bucks on the side while most of us are just working on our own projects. Same end result. It's not like there is a constant turnover at the shop, just one ongoing project at a time. I'd say 90% of us have had a car laid up in the garage for over a month at a time.

It just sucks when whiny people piss and moan over minutiae. So what, you deal with a little noise during the day on the weekends. Could be selling OxyContin to your kids instead. The dopey bitch across the street from me used to bitch at me about my loud Mustang, turns out the offending car was the kid down the street. Wasn't she surprised when I pointed this out. Part of being a good neighbor is dealing with a little bit here and there because when you throw a party or need a variance for a new deck, you don't want the neighbors calling the police or telling you to go fuck yourself. Respect is a two way street.

From the sound of your post it sounds like you're that neighborhood asshole that won't give the children's football back when it goes over the fence. That's cool though, people like you who are quick to bitch and sue will make me a rich man one day.

 

Will you still have that attitude when you've made your money got the nice home and someone starts running a noisy business next door in your leisure time. there is a lot of differance between the noise of kids playing and someone grinding and cutting. I actually live in a iner city area and by the nature of it it is noisy but by moving here I accepted that but if I lived in a residential area I wouldn't be happy about industrial type noise.

Life is about respect and consideration for others.

So how about you lose your attitude and think a little before you run off at the mouth.

 

My 2 cents says youve handled the situation in the proper manner. When I lived in the city,(Las Vegas) I was fortunate to have good neighbors that didnt mind my hobbies / sidelines, while folks just down the street were being hassled constantly. Now I'm up here in the boondocks,on 10 acres, in a homeowners association, with good neighbors. I usually end my day at 9 or 10, never paint on weekends, either early in the morning or at night. Closest neighbor is 300 feet away and i help him keep his business equipment (mowing / landscaping) in shape,plus his work truck. One neighbor is a cop, ones an electrician, ( who recently installed a couple of outlets on my new patio addition, cause I got his riding mower up and running). Ones a roofer and we just finished painting his 37 Chevy coupe, guess whos roofing my patio? Guess I'm livin right.

 

you are definitly going about it the right way,i too am having a similiar problem.the neighbor went straight to the city instead of me and they showed up out of the blue.after four years of doing it.i figured out all the laws and work within them but the bottom line is we still have be on the high road and be considerate to the neighbor (wich it sounds like you are )wich is the right thing to do because it represents all of us man good deal!!!!!but it does suck and i feel your pain.

 

Seriously get over yourself and have somebody change your huggies dude. I don't want your pissing and moaning to get on me. I don't understand why a car guy would do that to somebody. Rat on somebody because they work on their project in their spare time and occasionally make a buck helping folks out. I'm kinda ashamed to be associated with you.

Well put. Completely agree.

Sounds like you need to take your own advice and lose the attitude and think before you run your little mouth off. And to answer your question I wouldn't care one bit. In fact I'd be over there helping my neighbor out...why? Because that's what good neighbors do, they help each other out. Why else? Because I'm a car guy and car guys help other car guys out. And to further add fuel to the fire. My parents live in a neighborhood with 400k houses. Do any of their neighbors care that when I'm over there every weekend, we work on our cars? Nope. Do they care when I bring some local muscle car guys over during the week and we work on our cars in the cul-de-sac? Nope. They come and admire and offer to lend a hand. These are all families and seniors mind you...


To the OP, I'll agree that you're definitely going about it the right way trying to meet in the middle and make an agreement.

 

maybe a few dogs barking would be better???
or a couple hundred windchimes?????

have you given her aride in a old car yet???
good luck

 

last thing you want is the city code enforcement people on your case.i had a neighbor that decided that they didnt like my 16 year old son working on his nova convertable ...mind you this car was completely inside my garage.for the next 5 years it was a steady barage of having to cover my old cars because they looked derelect,even tho every one of them was registered and insured...city officials taking pictures of my son working inside the garage...city officials showing up every street sweeping day.and recording lic. numbers of all the cars in front of my house....i was even stopped from parking in my driveway because the driveway was 2 inches to short to completely clear the sidewalk.

 

In another thread I described where I live,in an old panel shop. My land lord owns another panel shop in the same street.My neihbours are all car related businesses and a little noodle factory where the owners live on the premises. One is also a recording studio where the worst music in OZ is recorded...
So noise is never a problem,my neihbours are all gone by 6pm most days .( except the crap muso's...)
City laws here sound the same as in the US, ' make as noise as much as you like but when you are the subject of a complaint,it's time to consider your two options' . Quiet down or move .
I have to agree with bookz, plus..you don't own the property,and you don't mention having a lease. Are you paying rent?
Are the people who let you use the shed owners of the freehold or just renting too?
They will be prosecuted for allowing you to make noise in a property and could possibly be evicted by the owners if they are only renting.
You can just move on,but the family in the house could face court time and I don't have idea of legal costs in your part of the world,but here it will cost you $600 per hour to save your ass.
The person who complained may be the owner of the freehold where she lives.It won't cost her a bean to see you prosecuted for annoying noise and she can even sue you for " loss of amenity and quiet enjoyment of her property". She has fronted you after all and asked you to tune it down.
keep on fighting and you will lose. As far As I can see,you have lost already.
Also,do you think the city is going to believe you when you say the many and varied cars moving in and out of the shed are all yours and it's only a hobby?
Not everyone is gullible ,especially not city ordinance people intent on protecting freehold property owners rights.

To the south of me is a large town place called Logan City.It is absolutely illegal to work on your own car on your own property any where in logan city. This was bought about by people like you running little one man businesses from home...and then kicking up when neibours dared complain about paint fumes,disc sanders running all day and night etc etc ..so Bookz has my support when he said that guys like you fuck it for everyone else.

 

What kind of compressor? We had to replace the compressor head on ours. The new one came with an intake silencer. It can be running and I can carry on a normal conversation with anyone but my nearly deaf father (even within arms reach of the compressor). The old compressor head (without the intake silencer) was so loud you had to wear hearing protection (painful otherwise), just with it running (no tools). It's an 80 gallon tank with a two stage pump with a 5 HP 220V motor on it (I forget how many CFM). I got the pump, and could buy a replacement silencer from Granger.

The sound deadening would be an excellent idea. It would likely be cheaper then any fines you might wind up with otherwise.

Keep your lines of communication open as well, as mentioned before it sucks when they stop talking to you, kinda like when little kids get suddenly quiet, you don't know what they're up to, but they are up to something, and it's bad.

 

buy the neighbor a box of ear plugs.
be sure to get it on video when ya hand them to her.

 

If you ask me the thing to do is find the codes - my town had them online. Check out the neighbor's property and report anything that's a violation. When my neighbor bitched I promptly let the town know part of the fence around his pool had settled and wasn't tall enough to meet code. I see he had to spend some money to fix it since then. I also was able to quote them to the codes people, and when they lied to me about something and I called them on it, they pretty much layed off with the bullshit.

Knotheads, sounds like a case of city-sponsored harassment, it probably would have been worth the money to get together with a lawyer and the codes books and threaten to sue them over it. Or put the house up for sale. (wouldn't it be nice to hit the lottery, move away, and instead of selling the place tear the house down entirely and have the lot re-assessed so they get less in property taxes?)

Laws vary from state to state and certainly country to country, your experiences in the People's Rebublic Of California or Australia will differ widely from the OP.

Bookz said

Unless you're a dumbass you'll buy your nice home out of the city on a big plot of land that doesn't have any close neighbors. Or if you have a wife to keep happy, carefully examine the neighborhood before you move in. And if someone is doing a little work on the side, you could try understanding that not everyone has money falling out of their ass and needs to make some money on the side if they're going to have a nice home or a nice custom or rod.


This thread is educational for people who don't already know it - having neighbors is usually more trouble than it's worth, and you're better off to live in a shack on a 100 acre plot of land than a fancy house on one acre with houses all around. Because not only are some people assholes in general who have no clue about cars, some people who should know better, are still assholes.

 

Amen.

 

You are taking the correct approach. Know your rights. Know you are in the right, but try to go out of your way to be reasonable. That kind of attitude goes a very long way toward steering you clear of any trouble.

 

Something you guys always seem to miss in these threads is something that I've found is one of my biggest advantages in these situations. BE THE NEIGHBORHOOD CAR GUY. Sure, changing oil, fixing headlights, and changing thermostats aint fun, but a little goodwill in these areas goes a long way. Also, be nice to their kids. Like, go out of your way to be nice to their kids. I've introduced myself to every kid that comes by. Help em fix their bikes. This does two things.

1. Gets you in the good graces of their parents, as well as anyone else that sees it.
2. When the kids become teenage punks, they won't break into YOUR garage to get their dope money.

Hell, the other night, one of the neighbors had a flat. It was after midnight and I had to be at work at 6AM, but I got up, got dressed, and brought out my big jack. Just as I did that, their car fell off the scissor jack. Saved their ass, big time. You think they'll ever call the cops about a parts car that's in my driveway? Hell no...

 

I live by train tracks and my neighbors are weird, thankfully.

Some of y'all need to actually read the narrative before posting your solutions, ya know? the husband/wife 4 kids ain't the ones complaining. read people.

 

You appear to be handling it properly. It sounds like she wasn't really bitching, just trying to let you know that she likes some quiet time on her weekends. When I lived in town, all the neighbors knew me as the car guy who would fix everybody's stuff. I had no real hassles except with the hood rats from a few blocks away and that was just because they were punks who tried to steal stuff from me. They learned one of my Great danes or Rottweiler stayed in the garage.

 

Haha. The neighborhood crackhead bummed a dime off me at the gas station the other day. He then offered to mow my lawn as it's out of hand. I told him I had to keep it long because my dogs are CRAZY and jump the fence! I told him once, in our old house, the meter-man came by and the pitbull broke out THROUGH A WINDOW and chased him back to his van. It was all bullshit, but I bet every crackhead in the city crosses the street before walking by my house...

 

And may I ask just where do you do your work? Is it in an approved area? Or maybe its that you don't do any work at all and stick to reading books and building models. Maybe before you point your nose in the air at me, you should understand the entire situation, as Joe laid out for you. Believe me, if the work was there, I'd be in the biggest shop I could afford.

Well, I am. I've fixed a flat, jump starts, hell the kids even play in the garage sometimes. They keep thinking my shoebox is Hudson Hornet from Cars. I'm in great graces with the people in the house. And I'd have no problem helping out others if they asked and if it meant I'd be allowed to slide on a few things.