Problem With Upstairs Neighbours Young Child

Plot Twist - You buy the top floor flat and sell the ground floor flat to investor.

Buy authentic medievil plate armour, run around your flat and annoy the now down stairs neighbours
 
fez said:
Not being rude here and perhaps most people don't share this view but you come across as rather unreasonable. New people moved in and it sounds like the first interaction with them was to passive aggressively ask them "are you still moving furniture around". I'm pretty sure you knew they weren't because little feet running around don't sound anything like furniture being moved around or adults moving about. The rest of your post reads somewhat like someone who is looking for issues to try and get them kicked out....because of the noise rather than for any of the other issues.

You live in a flat. Some flats have good sound proofing, others don't. They have young kids. Young kids have the attention span of a gnat and don't understand that they can't run about all the time because its noisy for others. You can tell them this until you are blue in the face and they will still do it. How old are the kids? Are they 2? 5? older?

As a parent you can try to encourage different sorts of play and behaviour but at a young age there are limits and those limits are not very big. If they have twins then its worse. I have twins and they wind each other up and want to play together. It would be a nightmare to try and stop them from making noise.

I'm not sure you are going to get any joy with noise complaints from children running about above you. Its not antisocial and its not something that can be easily remedied. You might simply have to look to move or look to put sound insulation on your ceiling to help with it.

It sucks but in any accommodation where you share walls/ceilings etc with others you might have noisy neighbours. We had neighbours in our last house who had 2 spaniels and three cats. The spaniel would nearly give me a heart attack regularly because he would wait quietly until I was walking past the fence and then bark at me like a nutter. One of their cats sat in our front garden 80% of the time and people would just walk up to our house to pet the cat. Another one was nasty and would hiss at and attack our cat in our garden and the third came in and ate our cats food whenever he could. They were great neighbours and in the grand scheme of things, these were minor issues but we could easily have fallen out with them about it.

Constant noise is horrible so I understand that it makes you a bit irrational but you need to try and work to resolve this rather than just making enemies. Can they put rugs or carpet down if they have cheap ****** wood floors. Can you sound proof your ceiling. If your neighbours like you they are far more willing to try and keep noise down rather than just thinking "**** him".
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Yeah ignore all this. Lure the kids outside then cut their feet off. That'll teach him.
 
famasfilms said:
Started playing my music on a 7.1.4 system to drown out the banging, but can still hear the banging even when music in my room is 60db at the listening position! Had to turn off HOTD in Dolby Atmos because of the constant bangings.
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Yes.

famasfilms said:
Whilst I have my own enclosed private patio area, I still pay my share to have that part gardened
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Yes?

famasfilms said:
I banged on it once with side of my fist in hammer motion
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Yes!

famasfilms said:
Ultimately we've both rubbed each other the wrong way,

He's picked the wrong person if he wants to try that lol
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Oh my God, yes yes yes!!
 
Quartz said:
As someone who also lives in a flat and has had unpleasant tenants as neighbours I don't think @famasfilms is being unreasonable.
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Do you think his neighbours are unpleasant? So far they have committed the crimes of having children and putting their washing out in a communal area. I don't think Santa is going to be adding them to his naughty list quite yet.

Rroff said:
Be interesting to compare their perspective of it vs what is going on - when I've lived in flats you'd often get 1-2 people complaining of constant banging, etc. yet the people they were complaining about really weren't bad at all in my opinion. But then on the other hand you do get people living in these situations who are completely inconsiderate of anyone else :(
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The issue is that you cannot expect someone to wear soft shoes and tiptoe around all day just because it makes noise. We've just taken up all the carpets in our house and you can hear people talking in the room below you now. Of course there are unreasonable things you can be doing but I would suggest that in a huge number of these cases, the issue is more related to a lack of sound proofing than behaviour. In rented accommodation, the tenant has little say in this.

Rroff said:
Just because kids don't understand doesn't mean you can't do a lot as parents to mitigate it as you've pointed out.
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You can certainly try but you and your kids also have the right to enjoy your own home. Kids want to be kids and run around and play. This is why I think you have to fix the insulation rather than expect someone to constantly be on edge or trying to control toddlers when it comes to making noise.
 
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You have to accept the risk when buying a flat/apartment or semi-detached house, that you may be disturbed by neighbours to some degree. With the hope it will be minimal, rather than extreme.
 
I totally understand the OPs frustrations. It was why I took longer to buy first home as I couldn't face living in a semi let alone a flat.

If there are kids running around or any sort of persistent noise it can be a nightmare living with that. But at the same time, what do you do?
I don't think you can do much if it's during the day? You can wear headphones etc but that isn't great. I certainly can't wear headphones all day. It causes me skin issues.


Is there any other option but to move? But then you shouldn't have to do that.
 
Yaayuh! said:
You have to accept the risk when buying a flat/apartment or semi-detached house, that you may be disturbed by neighbours to some degree. With the hope it will be minimal, rather than extreme.
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This really. All you can do is find one with decent sound proofing, get a top floor, improve the sound proofing.

Obviously many people have no choice and have to live in a flat. But much of this is beyond your control.
 
My first place was a ground floor flat, it was horrendous. You can't pick your neighbours unfortunately.
Best advice is probably sell up and find somewhere else. You've already got things off to a terrible start with your new neighbours. Life's too short to live in misery if you don't have too.
The landlord wants your flat, so offer it to him for £lol.
 
Are the children in question running around with shoes on? If so could they be asked to do so without shoes or with soft slippers which would make less noise?

2-3AM on a weekend is excessive for a young child (OP's post) and most very young children would have been in bed for a long time by that point I would have thought.
 
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ltron said:
Are the children in question running around with shoes on? If so could they be asked to do so without shoes or with soft slippers which would make less noise?

2-3AM on a weekend is excessive for a young child (OP's post) and most very young children would have been in bed for a long time by that point I would have thought.
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The child from the OP is now almost a teenager.
 
413x said:
Obviously many people have no choice and have to live in a flat. But much of this is beyond your control.
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Its also just another case of "English housing stock is *****". In europe, apartments are far more common and they build them properly rather than the general ***** they build in the UK. There is no need for upstairs noise to be heard downstairs but they don't care about that because the people building the flats ain't living in them.
 
fez said:
Its also just another case of "English housing stock is *****". In europe, apartments are far more common and they build them properly rather than the general ***** they build in the UK. There is no need for upstairs noise to be heard downstairs but they don't care about that because the people building the flats ain't living in them.
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This.
I lived in a semi for a bit and I could hear the woman next door throwing up from anorexia like she was in my house.

Never again. Was gross.

Walls were like paper.
 
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fez said:
Its also just another case of "English housing stock is *****". In europe, apartments are far more common and they build them properly rather than the general ***** they build in the UK. There is no need for upstairs noise to be heard downstairs but they don't care about that because the people building the flats ain't living in them.
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Yeah, it's really poor. I'm lucky in mine currently - first floor maisonette, but purpose built and my block is the last on the terrace, so the floor is solid concrete, and the bedroom wall is on the side without neighbours.

My previous flat was not purpose built, and I could hear the guy above me stirring his tea. Never again.
 
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