Noisy Neighbors and Distress

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Re earplugs and headphones: I mean to find whatever it is the workers on construction sites use. Maybe search on-line for words like "construction" or "noise cancelling."

I googled it and got this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ear ... eName=GSTL

I don't think anybody should be thrifty about this, considering the damage to your eardrums, concentration, lack of sleep, and eventually sickness of the doctoring/expensive kind.

Somebody mentioned white noise - yes! I used to live upstairs from drunk & stoned teenagers whose mother worked nights. My misery was profound. Then I bought my first air conditioner and found out I couldn't hear them at all.

I hope you'll find something; I hate to think of you going through this.

Many years ago, Consumer Reports found that foam earplugs were good for 27 db when new, the same as the best passive ear cans. Some of the active noise cancelling tech can now do better, but a cheap set I tried only modified the noise. Wearing ear plugs extensively can radically increase microbial populations in the inner ear.
My noise trouble has another dimension - for many months, I had to worry about a physical attack by my separated wife, so I'm nervous if I can't hear possible intruders, but easily startled awake by other noises.

Best thing I ever got for noises in the night was a poodle. I used to check out every sound. Once I got a dog, I would hear something, open one eye and see dog fast asleep, and go back to sleep myself. A sleeping dog = nothing's happening.

I have been watching youtube videos of noisy apartment neighbors because I wanted to know what elephants above you sounded like and it's basically pounding sounds like someone is tapping on the wall loudly with an object. Basically the noise above you is just people living their normal lives, they do not have the TV on loud or their music nor are they screaming and shouting or pounding on walls and they are not having any parties, just ordinary stuff they are doing to live their daily lives. Apartments just have poor floor insulation to absorb the sound because it's not like that in houses when someone is above you nor is it like that in buildings and some apartments have poor insulation in walls you can hear your neighbors do everything. When I lived in my apartment, I could hear everything in the hallway and it was just normal stuff you do in your daily lives like washing dishes, people talking, TV being on at regular volume, but once I got in my apartment, it would all be quiet because the walls had very good insulation until someone went out in the hallway and you could hear them walking and talking or going outside and I could even hear the mail man come and putting the mail in the mail boxes. So the walls to the outside were poorly insulated I would say but the walls facing the other units were well insulated and good sound proof. The only thing I heard was a pipe whenever someone used their bathroom next door and the neighbor asked me about it because he was so apologetic about the sound and my husband and I told him no worries because it's part of living and he can't help it and it only lasts a few seconds. There was something wrong with the piping in the wall so it would make a snoring sound inside the wall and it was the next door neighbor turning on the water or flushing the toilet. That was a plumping issue, not a neighbor issue and sometimes noisy neighbors are not a neighbor issue at all and it's a building issue.

My normal walking made loud pounding to the people below me so the ceilings were poorly insulated it makes me wonder if they could hear anything else above them but yet I couldn't hear anything below me except for a bed pounding against the wall when our previous neighbor would have sex but my husband would hear her scream and make sounds but he has better hearing than me and I would also hear her loud music but it wasn't bass so it was calming. Then she was evicted and we got new neighbors who were both brothers and the only thing I heard from them was them fighting when they would shout and scream at each other and their bass music and that was it. I heard nothing else. Then our neighbor next door started to play his TV real loudly sometimes. Luckily our neighbors didn't play their loud bass music on a daily basis and they would go long periods of time not playing their loud music.

But here are some of the videos about noisy neighbors above you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qDTyQzcIdc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zRr1LyepdU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zRr1LyepdU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LLPwd7ks0U

I use an air filter to generate a masking noise.

How do noise canceling headphones works? What is white noise? I live in an apartment & I have hardwood floors, I can hear my upstairs neighbors, I can hear their footsteps, when they coming home & go upstairs. I heard them in my living room, my bedroom & the bathroom. Some people told me to get earplugs.

Active noise cancelling uses a speaker that tries to always move opposite to the ambient sound, negating it. White noise is like radio static or a shower - volume without information.

Ack! I'm moving soon but haven't found the new apartment. I just realized it's going to be just like yours in respect of noise. It was when you mentioned footsteps on the stairs, coming and going, that I remembered what that's like. Intolerable.

I'm going to have to take my own advice. Anything that will silence a construction site to somebody working on it must surely work on my neighbours. I won't need to use it all day; just an hour should reset my tolerance.

Re your neighbours - what age range? I am living in a 55+ building - not a sound. Until I move.

Are your neighbours louder than your TV, if you try to watch a show?

What's your relationship with them? Can you ask them to wear soft-soled shoes inside?

Here's some white noise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_2FDRtFOAw

This might sound extreme, but in the past I've been kept awake all night by noisy neighbours having a party in their garden until well past 6am. I got so fed up I called the police and reported I was an anonymous neighbour and had seen some of the party-goers with drugs. The police turned up 20 minutes later and peace was finally restored. I was at my wits end, and for all I know they were doing drugs, as they were certainly still very loud and active at 6am!

I lived in a converted house, I was downstairs, my neighbours upstairs, and they were completely barmy. They would slam doors all the time, stomp from room to room and generally acted badly all the time I lived there. If I dared have the TV on above whisper quiet, they'd complain, sometimes banging on my door late at night, which I refused to answer. I lived in fear of them for a couple of years, they would turn on music loudly at 6am, blasting it above my bedroom. I moved my bedroom to a different room, but the noise followed me. They must have been snooping around, looking in my windows to know that.

One day, I discovered they were tampering with my mail. I got a call from a solicitor about a letter they'd sent me that had been returned as not at the address. The upstairs lady had gotten hold of my mail and sent it back! I reported her to the police, and after they visited her, and me, she spent 30 minutes on the phone to the letting agent, screaming at them. She moved out a week later and I finally had some peace.

To this day, a slamming door makes me jump out of my skin.

Oh, sneaky but effective! Unfortunately I can't see my lot to try something like that.

I'm so sorry for all of you - this is a nightmare theme to me. I'm extremely lucky to be having a quiet period at the moment, but I've had nerve-shredding experiences in every place I've lived.
Noise from movement and voices, I can cope with (but not footfalls when they're very heavy from someone who's also a noise nuisance in other ways). Music is what I can't handle. At the first sound of bass my heart just drops.
My only advice is to hammer the landlords, building management, council, anybody and everybody, and at the same time take care of yourself with ear protection.
If I can distract myself from the indignity of it, I can tolerate shutting up my ears, since I don't do anything that really requires me to be able to hear without headphones. I don't want to sound like a spammer but I do have recommendations for a combination of in-ear earplugs (compatible with sleep, after loads of trial and error) with 3M airport-grade ear protectors which I've posted a couple of times before.
The scum of the Earth will continue to breed the scum of the Earth. The lack of defense for noise nuisance enrages me. My attitude now that the police won't respond is that if neighbours refuse to stop, then a situation that the police do have to respond to is basically inevitable. Now I have a terror reflex to the sense of conflict this stuff triggers, but it wasn't always that way. Once upon a time - I'd just got out of quite a serious stay in hospital - I lived near a house of foreign students who kept me up two nights. The rage was like a fever. I kicked their door in. To be honest, I enjoy the memory.

I know the most common, even-handed advice is to have a civilised conversation with a neighbour about noise. I have had, I think, six terrible neighbours and this approach has never, ever worked. Only relentlessly trying to have them evicted or simply moving out has ever been effective.

I sometimes fantasise about having the resources to band up into a sort of union to buy up an entire housing block where residents have to sign up to draconian sound rules, where the building management has its own sound meters and second sound offenses mean instant eviction. Or that housing like that just existed so I could move into it. I'd accept living in silence if it meant I could avoid other peoples' inconsideration in my own home.

The worst menace I ever had was a fifty-odd year old man. Utterly pathetic.

It's a couple, a man & a woman, they are young. I can hear footsteps in their apartment, she wear high heels. I turn up my TV, but I can still hear them. I don't hear them too much in the summer when I have my fan & A/C on. We are not friends, we are friendly to each other when I bump into them.

When I hear the noise, it hurt my ears sooo much, I try to keep calm, after a while & I can't take it anymore, I will scream. Hopefully I will move sometime this year, I just need to get my energy to clean & pack, so I can do less later.

My next door neighbours had a baby about a year ago and to her credit she's been a very good girl. Barely hear a peep out of her They do have a habit of making these odd noises to her which can get a bit annoying.

About 15 or so years ago we had the neighbours from HELL. If you look up "chav" in the dictionary you will see a picture of them. They would constantly blare loud music at night, would openly drink to excess and do drugs and often stole from nearby houses. In the end they were evicted. The youngest daughter who was about 4 at the time is apparently in prison now.

Thank heaven you're moving. You might want to look for elderly neighbours who wear slippers.

I once had a very young neighbour who roller-skated in her basement apartment. She thought nobody could hear her but it rattled the walls all the way up.

May I make a suggestion - skip cleaning. You're already exhausted. Just pack. You'll recover in your new place and unpack at leisure. Label boxes!

If a/c helps, then maybe you could leave white noise on all the time - worth a try?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_2FDRtFOAw