Foo - upstairs noise....

would you consider it reasonable for the person living above you, supposing you live in an apartment, to stomp, run, jump, and drop things so loudly that it wakes you up even though you're wearing ear plugs? would you consider it reasonable to hear such noise over a pair of ear plugs?


i've been having problems with my upstairs neighbor doing this sort of thing since i moved in in june. loooooonng story short, the first time the residential life people say that such a thing would be ridiculous, then the second time they tell me, one of them being the person i had talked to the first time, that such a thing would be acceptable. each time they told me this, they first came over to send a person upstairs to see what was causing all the racket and tell me something along the lines of "this building is old and you're going to hear more noise in it than you did in the previous one you lived in". the first time they did this the main lady that's been handling this went upstairs and proceeded to jump, run and stomp heavily to get my reaction to this. She told me anything like that would be ridiculous. to me it seemed that what she was doing was about 80% of what the upstairs neighbor was doing. the second time she came over, which was a few months later, she had her assistant stay down stair while she went upstairs to have the upstairs neighbor run around. the assistant said that was normal. i thought it was quite loud and created just about the same level of noise the neighbor had been creating in the past. it might have been a tad quieter.


this morning i was woke up repeatedly, while wearing some of the best ear plugs availabe, by my upstairs neighbor. i called the person in the residential life office, it's and on call office i think, that deals with this and the upstairs neighbor became quiet enought for me fall asleep again. then she started the racket up again until noon. i didn't call again because i kept falling in and out of sleep at the time waking up when she would make the racket. the points which the noise occured this time were less frequent.


what would you do in this situation? what can be done? i've thought of complaining to the BBB and talking to the school lawyer about it. would they be able to do anything?

What's a residential life office?

It sucks but there's not too much you can do. If there are stipulations about carpets and she doesn't have them that might help but next place look for good thick solid cement floors. My old place had rugrats running Saturday morning back and forth for hours starting at 7 AM. That was fun.

Are you in a dorm or something? If so, how old are the people making noise, and are you an undergrad or grad student?

Get a place upstairs.

Slip a 20 on the kid on the upper upper floor and let your upstairs neighbor have a taste of his own medicine :)

Are you in a dorm or something? If so, how old are the people making noise, and are you an undergrad or grad student?

i'm in the university apartments. i have my own small one bedroom. i'm an undergrad that will hopefully soon be a graduate student (starting in summer or fall). the person above me is an undergrad of some unknown level. i think.

i'm in the university apartments. i have my own small one bedroom. i'm an undergrad that will hopefully soon be a graduate student (starting in summer or fall). the person above me is an undergrad of some unknown level. i think.

Then honestly it's to be expected. The only think you can do short of moving off campus is to see if you can transfer to grad housing.

Buy your upstairs neighbor a nice big area rug...

the same housing is used by everyone. this isn't a dorm. it's an acutall apartment complex.

I rent out my house to students. One of the house rules is to be quiet during a certain time set and agreed upon by the students to allow for studying. If they cannot abide by that, then I get told about it.

As a matter of fact, I have someone moving out because there was a dispute about the house rules.

Is there something on your contract about certain house rules? If not then you might be in a bit of a jam regarding the noise.

the same housing is used by everyone. this isn't a dorm. it's an acutall apartment complex.

Then I guess you could either change to a different flat in the complex or move to a different complex.

:(

In apartment dwellings - I always preferred living above people as I wouldn't hear as much - and I'm a quiet sort too so my sounds were minimal.

My father's apartment is on the 1st floor and above him moved a rather large young couple, who's favorite thing, it seemed, was to bound thru the apartment and end up in the bedroom for loud sex. Guess everything they did was loud - including vacuuming - where (as my father guessed) something would get stuck and so the person would STOMP the vacuum up and down on the floor to dislodge the object. Thankfully they moved out - after 2 years. My father never complained, cept to us kids.

I and my Mom just sold our double house - where for the last 6 years, rented out my first floor apartment (I moved upstairs with Mom) to save money. Good lord we went thru some freaking odd tenants. They'd move in normal, normal looking, normal credit and other references - and immediately turned ODD. Good grief. Chain smokers, people who suddenly were disabled (hey thought they worked!!!) and all they did was sit home and smoke all day and peek out the window blinds, and other odd things like take a drill and drill into the ceiling right below my closet!!!! and do something in there - swear he put a camera!!! Just odd thing!!


But the actual worst was the last tenants - the ones who broke the camels back actually. Nice girl, really nice - kept her apartment clean and everything and .... turned into the biggest Friday night - bring home another guy person! Good grief. She went thru more guys - the fights, the slamming of the doors etc, etc - she went thru 5 tub faucet handles in 2 years, broke two toilets off the floor, many other things - but her rent was there on time.

But her sex life was ... phenominal --- especially on the last boyfriend who lasted 1-1/2 years. Good grief. And pre-sex was the ELEPHANT romp thru the house - I think she tickled him - Good gawd. No thanks, no thanks, no thanks - no more being a freaking landlord. Never.

I'm living with roommates right now - and we're quite careful of our cooking/having people over - and just being cordial. Must say - my friend (and I helped tear down this house five years ago - luv my baby sledgehammer) - put in R22 - thicker insolation - even building the walls out to accomodate (we gutted the house - kinda cool being in a 3 floor house where all you see is a rotten staircase, open floors and walls with a certain few pieces of plywood over the floor beams to walk on) the insolation - but I have to say it has cut the noise down!!! Guess my roommate's son has had some women over in the evening - and believe me - I hear NO SEX at all.

Cool.

All I can say is talk to the powers that be who you pay rent to - cause - in arrangement where there are other people living there as well - everyone must be cool to the other dwellers.

i sympathize...i've had some real idiot upstairs neighbors. I don't know why it is that some people just can't do anything without making a huge amount of noise. We had one couple upstairs who sounded like they played catch with chairs and tables...and they both had really heavy walks and stomped around all day like elephants. And once this really gross family moved in with their three demented sons...they were psychos! i can't believe how people behave sometimes. That's why i really don't like apartment buildings.

The last building i lived in wasn't too bad...i lived on the top floor. But the neighbors around the building were really noisy!

Talk to the people upstairs yourself? If asking them courteously doesn't work...
Noise canceling headphones.
Play music you can sleep to at a volume loud enough to mask most of the noise (if that's possible).

they've been loud enough to hear over my in ear monitors in the past if i recall correctly. these block far more noise than any noise cancelling phone.

Maybe you just need to take up the saxophone. ;)

Maybe you just need to take up the saxophone. ;)

But don't learn to play. ;)

We had upstairs neighbors who would periodically empty a jar of marbles on their floor.

surface to air missiles could help.

I remember when living alone ... there was this younger female couple living directly above me .... they were very very noisy.....but in a good way :)

...until they started rehearsing the "The Rose" song that Bette Midler did , for an upcoming wedding....they rehearsed it day and night for weeks......man, I hate that song to this day....

Sounds like your upstairs neighbors are jerks. I was your upstairs neighbor freshman year of college. The guy below me came up, explained and showed me the noise we were causing him, and we stopped doing the stupid junk that was making 80% of the noise.

Then we became drinking buddies with the kids below us, so on nights when we would still be making some noise, they would be up drinking with us.

45Hz/47Hz duo-tone pumped through their floor via sub-woofer. The audible frequencies are just enough to rattle your bones, and the sub wave will make them dizzy enough that they can't run around any more. It really doesn't need to be that loud, either; just loud enough to get through their floor (which will act as a giant resonating speaker if you put sub close enough to the ceiling.)

I had horrible rude neighbours upstairs who would act as the babysitting service for about 4 other couples in the complex, and around 4pm the pounding would start. I fired up the sub and sent children scattering back home within 5 minutes. A couple of them even threw up.

45Hz/47Hz duo-tone pumped through their floor via sub-woofer. The audible frequencies are just enough to rattle your bones, and the sub wave will make them dizzy enough that they can't run around any more. It really doesn't need to be that loud, either; just loud enough to get through their floor (which will act as a giant resonating speaker if you put sub close enough to the ceiling.)

I had horrible rude neighbours upstairs who would act as the babysitting service for about 4 other couples in the complex, and around 4pm the pounding would start. I fired up the sub and sent children scattering back home within 5 minutes. A couple of them even threw up.

That is truly evil. It's like fighting fire with thermonuclear weapons.

I like it. :D

That is truly evil. It's like fighting fire with thermonuclear weapons.

I like it. :D

I tried going the polite route first. I went upstairs to ask them to keep the noise down. The woman told me that she can't control all the children all of time, and that they are just "skipping and playing as children will."
She refused to listen to my logical statements about the difference between indoor and outdoor playtime activities, and that she might consider taking the battalion of children to the apartment's playground just across the parking lot.
Things calmed down briefly after my first noise complaint to the apartment managers. Then it started again. I went directly to the management, and filed a noise complaint with the Redmond Courtesy Patrol (a division of the police that deals with petty stuff like this, but still, it's a police report.) I wanted all of this on papertrail.
Things went through another calming and ramp-up. That's when I retaliated with the noise cannon. It quieted down for 2 weeks after that.
The next time it happened, I called the appropriate authorities about the unlicensed daycare center she was running. The papertrail of noise complaints spanning a 2 month period served as evidence for how long this had been going on, that it wasn't just a one-time thing. They got served with a 10 day eviction notice and had to pack up and leave. :D


It's not always the 'quick and dirty' solutions which are the best. In this case, I'm sure they had one bear of a time finding any other apartment that would take them with the black mark of an eviction from such a high-profile managed complex on their record.

45Hz/47Hz duo-tone pumped through their floor via sub-woofer. The audible frequencies are just enough to rattle your bones, and the sub wave will make them dizzy enough that they can't run around any more. It really doesn't need to be that loud, either; just loud enough to get through their floor (which will act as a giant resonating speaker if you put sub close enough to the ceiling.)

I had horrible rude neighbours upstairs who would act as the babysitting service for about 4 other couples in the complex, and around 4pm the pounding would start. I fired up the sub and sent children scattering back home within 5 minutes. A couple of them even threw up.I'm intrigued by this idea! Is there somewhere that I can download this tone?

Be glad my boyfriend and I don't live upstairs from you. :p

I'm intrigued by this idea! Is there somewhere that I can download this tone?

I use NCH Tone Generator, and design the duo-tone sounds myself. The fun way to do it is set up a stereo frequency sweep: Left channel going high to low in a given range, right channel going low to high in the same range. Based on the duration of the sweep and the span of the frequency range, you can estimate the proper frequencies to plug in for a solid duo-tone and fine tune it from there.

(A fun frequency fact: sounds above 18.5KHz are more easily audible to people under the age of 30 due to natural deterioration in hearing.)

Be glad my boyfriend and I don't live upstairs from you. :p

Just leave the curtains open and we may forgive it. ;)

I use NCH Tone Generator, and design the duo-tone sounds myself. The fun way to do it is set up a stereo frequency sweep: Left channel going high to low in a given range, right channel going low to high in the same range. Based on the duration of the sweep and the span of the frequency range, you can estimate the proper frequencies to plug in for a solid duo-tone and fine tune it from there.

(A fun frequency fact: sounds above 18.5KHz are more easily audible to people under the age of 30 due to natural deterioration in hearing.)

Yes, but have you found the brown note yet?

Also, an addition to your 'fun fact' wasn't there some shops in Briton testing a device to keep loiters away by putting out a note in a range that only people under 25 (generally speaking) would be able to hear.

Yes, but have you found the brown note yet?

Also, an addition to your 'fun fact' wasn't there some shops in Briton testing a device to keep loiters away by putting out a note in a range that only people under 25 (generally speaking) would be able to hear.

Want your place surrounded by women 24/7? 33 Hz baby!!