Garden Pictures Chat Corner

Very cool! Thanks! I only saw your answer today. I'm currently losing all interest in the garden. Regardless of the weather, we basically stay indoors. As soon as the sun comes out and I open my patio door, I either hear country music or techno blaring from the neighbor's property. Then I usually just turn around again. I’m starting to not know what else to do. He argues it's at room volume. But I don’t know if you can really call it room volume when 45 dB still reach my side of the property behind the fence (after he already turned it down). Currently, though, the music is being drowned out by his rebellious teenager who is riding an unregistered motorcycle in circles through the residential area... great, such a Sunday.

But 45 dB is practically nothing. Look it up on the well-known search engine and find corresponding volume comparisons. Either your measuring device is wrong in that regard or your ears are a bit more sensitive ^^

I can really only advise moderate alcohol consumption temporarily. It makes you more relaxed and you take it with humor. At least your house seems to offer good sound insulation. I hear music and children etc. all inside, so I can just go outside :)

When it annoys me extremely sometimes, I just drive away. Into the car or onto the bike and go on a trip.

So if I always had to hear Florian Silbereisen and Helenchen or something like that from the neighboring property, I would probably go on a rampage too. Apart from the fact that constant droning would annoy me as well - but if it’s music that makes my toenails curl up, it gets even worse.

Legally, you have no recourse, unfortunately nothing can be done about that. I would try to have a conversation and ask if at least during certain times (in the evening, when you want to sit outside in peace, for example) they could refrain from the constant blasting. There probably isn’t any other option. Would that be possible with the neighbor?

Or start counter-broadcasting. Few people can endure a strictly twelve-tone classical piece for long - not even at room volume. Then maybe you’ll have a basis for discussion with the neighbor again (I’ll stop with that, but you please do too!)

It's easy to say. When I think back to earlier times, the children in front of the office. They made beep sounds and I was on edge. I was annoyed. Colleagues first started to realize that the children were outside playing again when I was already almost going crazy. What helped? Well, changing jobs would probably have been a bit extreme. Earplugs in, then winter came and in spring it got better. The sight never made me happy, but it didn't drive me up the wall anymore.

As many have suggested, try to distract yourself, fill the garden with positive things and learn to tune it out. It's not loud, it's really a mental thing. My husband and I also don't notice the traffic near us anymore. But every party somewhere uphill is noticed. It sounds as if they are sitting on our terrace. We now have the fun of guessing who is partying right now. Depending on where you stand, it sounds different. So we try to make a joke out of it instead of getting annoyed. Create an oasis for yourself. Plant a hedge, a piece of privacy screen. Rework your garden when the music is annoying again.

I completely understand, it would annoy me too. But you have to expose yourself to it, that’s called exposure... put on some quiet, nice music yourself and look into your garden... otherwise you fixate on it and the annoyance about the neighbor and then it’s so present in your mind that you only focus on it....
Do you have a privacy screen towards them?

Hello,

yes, we have now set up the privacy screen. I am still trying to wall up the "hole under the fence" with bricks at the bottom. I’m not a mason, but maybe that will help. But to really keep it out, I would probably have to build a soundproof wall 3-4 meters high, and I’m afraid that is not allowed as a boundary construction.

I naively believed that no one would do that, putting a bass box in the garden. Had I known that beforehand, we might have really looked longer for an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. But neither in my old neighborhood nor anyone else in our new development does that. It’s really only our neighbors who consider that necessary. I myself would never come up with the idea of turning on a bass-heavy speaker in the garden.
The neighbors on the other side sometimes play music while working. But they then have a portable device and take it with them, and it’s not loud enough to disturb. And they don’t do it on Sundays.
Those who disturb us place the device with a power socket connection against the house wall and turn it up so loud that you can hear it throughout the whole garden (and also ours).
For us, only the bass arrives loudly.

I have tried to drown it out with my own quiet music; that doesn’t work either. First, I almost get annoyed by my own music because I can relax better when I don’t hear any music, and then it bothers me that I have to have it on. Also, it’s even more annoying because my own music’s bass line clashes with the "opponent’s" one, and they don’t fit together, then you get a “crappy”-ophony, which is even worse than the pure droning.

I can hardly imagine that it can be considered room volume (at least the low frequencies) when he plays music on his property and I can hear it OVER my TV in my living room with the windows closed? Even if the sound is somehow unfavorably reflected, that doesn’t increase the sound pressure, does it? If it goes through the walls into our house, the pressure is probably just too high?
I can’t imagine that something like that should be lawful on a Sunday – almost every Sunday.

Really try using counter sound.