What is reasonable outdoor noise/activity level?

[Bootsie]

If you live in a detached-home neighborhood what would expect to be a reasonable amount of activity for a family to do in their driveway?  Think of a setup with a driveway for one house that runs along the side of the property but within six feet of the house next door (with a fence on the property line).  What type of activities?  Ladderball?  PingPong?  Skateboarding?  Tricycles? Playing music?  Art projects?  Would it matter how many hours per day/days per week it occurred?  Particular hours of the day it would be acceptable?  Would you be more or less tolerant of these activities during a pandemic?

[Farrar]

This is so individual by neighborhood. I feel like the norms expected by folks differ dramatically. Anyone in this thread who comes in and says it IS this way or that is not understanding how regional and community specific those sorts of norms are.

That said, around here, as long as people aren't screaming "JIM!" at the top of their lungs at 2 am (thanks, Jim's drunk friend last week) or playing music so loudly that even with the windows closed it interferes with my ability to watch TV or listen to my own music then it's a free for all in my book. People should get over themselves. But I also live in a city.

[alisoncooks]

I think all of the listed are reasonable, within considerate time frames. Say, after 8 or 9am and before 7 or 8pm is fair game. I'd put the kibosh on play that caused screaming.  Music -- eh, volume would determine that. I'd discourage it for my own kids -- a volume to be heard well over play could easily become too loud for someone sitting in a next door house. 

I like a quiet house and I dislike outside noise...but as long as it's not all day/every day, I could live with it, especially these times. If the neighbor works from home, I'd try to be accommodating. 

[Ellie]

Well, all of those activities seem fine to me (although I don't want the music to be loud enough that I can sing along with it). BUT not before 8 a.m., not after 8 p.m.

[WendyLady]

We are out of the little kid stage, but we have new neighbors with 4 kids under 8 years old. They tend to have a couple of hours of outdoor play time in the late morning and then again in the late afternoon. I think it's great - I love to hear them. It would seem really strange if they were out all day long, or if they were out really early or really late (before 8 or 9am and after 8pm.) Our street is quiet, so they are able to skate and ride scooters back and forth on the road or sidewalk. 

Down the street there are two brothers who are mid-teenagers. They often play baseball/catch in the road and they have a batting cage set up. I love it when they are out playing - you can hear the bat zing! Again, it's something they do for a couple of hours in the afternoon and would be less fun if they had a really loud radio playing "mature" music the whole time or if they were fighting/yelling at each other or something.

Lots of people have pools here and it is common to have a late night pool party - I know my own teen and his friends can be loud and obnoxious. We don't have a pool, but several of my son's friends have pools - this summer they tended to shut down the outdoor party by 10 on week nights and 11 on the weekend. 

I think the worst noise is the team of yard guys who take care of our yard and several of the yards in our neighborhood with all the blowing and mowing - I don't know how they do it - it is hours with those loud machines in some serious desert heat. 

[SKL]

I think almost anything goes, as long as there is not extended loud screaming or sirens.  I would be cognizant of when the rest of the neighborhood tends to be quiet; in my neighborhood, before 9am and after 9 or 10pm would call for activities that can't be disruptively heard inside the other homes.  Unless there is a party, of course.  🙂

[Pen]

42 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

If you live in a detached-home neighborhood what would expect to be a reasonable amount of activity for a family to do in their driveway?  Think of a setup with a driveway for one house that runs along the side of the property but within six feet of the house next door (with a fence on the property line).  What type of activities?  Ladderball?  PingPong?  Skateboarding?  Tricycles? Playing music?  Art projects?  Would it matter how many hours per day/days per week it occurred?  Particular hours of the day it would be acceptable?  Would you be more or less tolerant of these activities during a pandemic?

 

Imo 
All of that sounds fine for daytime — music should be soft enough not to bother people working or schooling from home even in daytime (otherwise listen with earbuds). If someone nearby works nights and needs to sleep in day that should be taken into account

[gardenmom5]

those sound reasonable activities if done during reasonable hours, and reasonable volumes.  However, if it was all day, every day, and the amount of noise typical of kids on a playground - I'm sure as a next door neighbor I would find it tiresome.

 

[SKL]

I guess this is a timely discussion, since my kid just started playing the trombone.  I can just barely take it, LOL.  I told her to only play at times when people probably aren't working or sleeping.  But she's 13.  I would not expect little kids to stay quiet all day long, even if someone was working / sleeping in a nearby home, especially at a time when they don't have the option to go somewhere else.  I have been working at home for many years (next to an open window), and the only thing that really bugged me was when the neighbor used to give singing lessons on Sunday mornings.  And that was probably just me being crabby.  😛

[skimomma]

I live in a dense neighborhood that is generally quite loud. Pre-pandemic, it was loud with kid noise, music, college parties, lawn stuff in the evenings up until 11pm on weeknights and much later on weekends.  This extended to all day went the schools were online and in summers.  Now it is quite quiet because it is cold and there is too much snow for outdoor play/socialzing once the sun goes down at 5:30.  I don't know if any of it is "reasonable" but it hasn't bothered us.  I think I tune most of it out.  The one thing that is NOT acceptable is my retired neighbor that insists on plowing his tiny driveway, every morning, at 5am.  SCRAPE SCRAPE SCRAPE.  The driveway is seriously less than 400 square feet and I cannot believe this guy even owns a plow truck for that tiny driveway.  Or that it MUST be done at 5am, even if we only got a half inch of snow overnight.  Most days he never even goes anywhere!  I have been tempted to offer to snowblow his drive (at a reasonable time like, say, 7am) just so I can sleep for another 90 minutes.  But he is a long-retired city plow operator and this must just be programmed into him.

[Carrie12345]

There is no one right answer.
I’m always more concerned with the amount of noise my own kids are making and if it’s disturbing others than I am with the noise other kids are making.  I don’t like listening to any kids whine for an extended period of time.  Screaming will get to me.  But the more normal sounds of fun being had? Whatever.

[Laura Corin]

I think that normal outdoor play noises would be just fine, with a curfew from maybe 10pm to 9am (with consideration given if children need to get to sleep earlier, for example).  Outdoor music would only be okay as an occasional event.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Laura Corin

[Tanaqui]

Personally, I'd be plenty happy if none of my neighbors ever made any noise, ever, at any time of day, for any reason.

But since I live in a neighborhood full of people who would like to sometimes make noise, I think that the sound of music, lawncare, and children playing is typically okay from, say, 8 - 9 on workdays and from 8 - 10 or 11 when the next day is a weekend or holiday. You also expect a certain amount of extra noise on the 4th of July and NYE. (And possibly on other holidays in certain ethnic neighborhoods.)

Nobody can completely stop dogs from barking or babies from crying, at any time of day, but I do expect people to try to limit it if only because a dog barking or a baby crying for hours and hours on end is probably an unhappy dog/baby.

[prairiewindmomma]

I'm pretty tolerant of low noise activities 9am-8pm.  The things you mention, with the exception of playing music, are all pretty quiet activities.  Even with re: to playing music, I think I think there's a difference between having to put up with a dude grinding his guitar with the amp turned way up and someone quietly playing the radio or working through a piece of music without an amp.

I'm not sure if one of my neighbors is a professional furniture builder or if he is just completely remodeling his house in month 9, but the drills, powersaws, and other power equipment sometimes reverberate given the particular layout of houses in our neighborhood.  At 1 pm, fine, at 6 am, not so happy to hear that. The only things that have really irritated me in the last several months have been loud drunken laughter and music outside of my bedroom window at 11pm and the day my neighbor took a sledgehammer to all of the concrete in his backyard on Independence Day for 12 hours straight. No one could enjoy being outside.  Other than that, our neighborhood is full of children and landscape workers and people outside on their patios on business calls all day long. From our schoolroom window I can see into 9 different lawns, so our homes are pretty tightly packed.

[Amy Gen]

We live in a downtown area, so I feel like it is our responsibility to use white noise, noise canceling headsets and sleep with ear plugs. 
 

Outside of my bedroom window, there are some kids who play outside until midnight. They are yelling and screaming and sometimes crying which makes my dog bark, but I just say, “Hooray for kids playing outside!”  They have every right to play in their own dang yard. 
 

One night their mom was on the porch talking and laughing with someone all night. I think they went in at 6:00 am. But I just imagined that it was a sister or an old friend that she finally got a chance to visit with.

 

[catz]

I personally think kids playing in their own yard with the volume level that accompanies that should be fine between maybe 8 am - 9 pm on weekdays and shifted an hour later on weekends.  I would be sensitive to volume levels on music, but some low level music while in the yard is fine IMO.  My husband listens to podcasts on a blue tooth speaker out in the yard all the time.  But it's at a conversational volume level and he actually just clips the speaker to whatever is close or his belt, hat, etc.

I live urbanish with old houses all together in close range and I am always mystified when people complain about human noises during the daytime.  Last week someone had a fit on our neighborhood e-mail listserv because their neighbor hired a lawn service to blow their leaves.  One afternoon a year of leaf blowers in the middle of the afternoon was too much for some people.  🙄  Maybe walk on over and offer to rake for them.  LOL.  

[Carol in Cal.]

My peeves are:

Leaf blowers.  I hate them.  And now that we are home more, I've realized that they are out there within a few houses of us 3-4 days per week.  Pretty tough to work like that, and I hate to think of kids trying to do computer classes with that in the background so much of the time.

Hollering--kids with joy, no problem.  But just people yelling at each other from one lot to the next or even to themselves, especially in the middle of the night, that's stressful.  I think that that is partly because sometimes it's from real danger or a dangerously escalating conflict, so I'm sensitized to that possibility whenever I hear it and I'm galvanized into action, so I think it would be more considerate not to put people through that unnecessarily.  

Other than that I've pretty much adjusted, even though we have a noisy city life and I prefer deathly quiet.  This is too crowded of a neighborhood to expect real quietness, and there are other advantages to being here.  It's fine.  

I don't think anything loud should start before 8 or last after 6, except brief and occasional big parties during the summer outside.  No one in the area has a pool, which, given our climate, is kind of surprising, and having folks over is not super common so the party issue is minimal except parking difficulties over holidays.

[KungFuPanda]

4 hours ago, Bootsie said:

If you live in a detached-home neighborhood what would expect to be a reasonable amount of activity for a family to do in their driveway?  Think of a setup with a driveway for one house that runs along the side of the property but within six feet of the house next door (with a fence on the property line).  What type of activities?  Ladderball?  PingPong?  Skateboarding?  Tricycles? Playing music?  Art projects?  Would it matter how many hours per day/days per week it occurred?  Particular hours of the day it would be acceptable?  Would you be more or less tolerant of these activities during a pandemic?

I’d expect normal family noises all day as long as it didn’t get loud before 8 or after 10. I’d also expect occasional gatherings as part of life; probably more during a pandemic. As long as they aren’t extreme enough to go against local noise ordinances. 
 

If the real trouble is that you just prefer it to be quiet all the time, a home so close to others might not be the best choice. If your neighbors aren’t breaking any laws or being truly obnoxious, I wouldn’t say anything. This is a little hypocritical coming from me because my neighborhood is really quiet, but that’s mostly luck. If I get a neighbor livelier than I prefer, I’d put some effort into noise dampening landscaping and soundproofing my own house. 
 

Right now it’s leaf blower season on my street. Dh gets a bit annoyed because he can’t work outside. No one person is using a leaf blower for long, but we get a LOT of leaves. Our small front yard produced over 30 shredded vacuum bags of leaves THIS WEEK alone. Yes. I shred them and compost them for my garden. At least the electric vacuum is quiet. No, we can’t “leave the leaves” or you literally cannot see the sidewalk or driveway. It’s life in the suburbs and we bought into it. 

Edited November 12, 2020 by KungFuPanda

[Shoeless]

Most noise doesn't bother me.  The only time I got annoyed was a neighbor that was blasting mariachi music so loudly that I could hear it inside my house, even when I went into a closet in the back of the house and shut the door.  Too much!

Kids playing doesn't bother me, although I'm not a fan of the "Let's see who can scream the loudest" game that some kids like to play.  I shut that game down when someone starts to play it.

[Terabith]

I'm pretty tolerant of most noises, but I have a kid who developed ptsd related to sounds, and they really struggle with things like the neighbor's dog who barks hysterically ALL THE TIME.  That's honestly pretty hard to take.  And we had former neighbors who would play loud music with bass that shook the house, and that was also really challenging to live with, regardless of time of day/ night.  

[gardenmom5]

I'm curious which neighbor you are.  The one with children playing, or the one who is irritated by the noise of children playing.

I'm on a street with 1/2 acre lots. (not close together - but with hills and valleys making interesting acoustics)  We have an across from us neighbor who will often be out front with her children in the late afternoon so they can play on our private road.  They do come into our driveway.   I decided I would just be happy the kids are playing outside, and they're not hurting anything.  They're usually only out there for an hour at most.  They have come to my house to ask to play with my dd's dogs. 

Their dog sitting at the end of my driveway barking at us as though we are the interlopers is a different story.  (they're doing better keeping him reigned in.)   My nextdoor group often report coyotes . . . They haven't been near my immediate neighborhood the last few years, despite being next to greenbelt/woods.  (One neighbor said a developer (who built six houses where only two houses had been previously) moved their den - is that even legal? Though if it was where they were building . . )  I want them back, I have rabbits for them to feast on.

At least with construction sounds - you know it will end, but they start early (legally, only after 7am).  The worst was when they were compacting soil immediately uphill from me.  I could feel the vibration in my bones.   

[JustEm]

I think any type of outdoor play is fine between 8am and 9pm.  But my children are outside all day long so I'm probably the neighbor people are annoyed at.  The neighbors across the street were actually upset with me because I let my kids play out front during school hours.  Not because they were be disruptive to their kids virtual schooling but because it wasn't fair to their children that mine could play outside when theirs couldn't.  I just told her she could always home school then she could let her kids out all day long if she wanted.  Her kids are almost NEVER outside.

[Bootsie]

At one time we lived the next block over from a high school.  We did not have to set an alarm clock; the band started practicing as the clock struck 7:00am.  We moved to a rental house for a couple of years and the next door neighbor had three preschoolers; she had them outside all of the time and one was a cranky, whiney toddler with frequent earaches--and lots of whining.  The neighbor on the other side of us had young children who were NEVER outsider--to the point that we worried that someone was critically ill.  

We bought a house last year.  The kids across the street play basketball and baseball and I can hear the dribbling and the crack of the bat--I consider that fairly normal types of noises.  I thought maybe I was out of touch when DH said our neighbor came over at 7:00pm (I wasn't home) complaining about our college-aged son who was skateboarding in our driveway.  He told my husband "We used to live in a quiet neighborhood and now he is out there all day, every day!"  DS had not been out there 30 minutes before when I left the house (in fact he wasn't even home).  He had been at work until after 10PM the previous three days.  The day before that it was raining..  We would have to go back at least five days to come up when it was even possible for DS to have been out there.  The neighbor made the comment, "Now it's like a frat party going on all the time."  Given that we are down the street from a major university he could really be dealing with that and not us.  

The complaining neighbor has a son who is a senior in high school and a daughter who is college.  In living here a year, we have never seen anyone in the family outside--besides walking to and from an automobile.  They have a dog that we can hear barking when we pull up in our driveway and are still in our car (and their dog is in their house).  I have never even seen them outside with the dog.  

 

[J-rap]

I know most businesses say 8am is the earliest, but I'd say 9am as a friendly neighbor.  And probably no later than 8pm.  (I'd be a little more lenient on a weekend, or on a beautiful summer day!)  Your neighbors do matter though.  If it's lots of young families, then probably you can be more flexible.  If there are elderly or other people (sick, night-shift workers, people who work at home now, etc.) close to you, I'd certainly be considerate of that.  I'd say of the sounds you listed, music is the one I'd be most careful about.  The other sounds can often blend into white noise.  Not true with music.

[Ellie]

8 hours ago, Dreamergal said:

Before 8 am is when our neighborhood is hopping though almost every kid Virtual Schools. But lots of people who were gym goers either ride bikes, walk, run, walk their dogs before the day begins and they get settled in with work or school. Pre-pandemic all those activities would be parents rushing from gym and taking kids school before work. 

After 8PM would in most years in my experience, but people seem to linger outside more especially if the weather is nice, no mosquitoes and with that comes music, cooking but I would say more loud conversation and laughter. That has noticeably ramped up this year including in our family being outside longer. People have invested in patio heaters and fire pits in my neighborhood. I expect a lot more people will linger outside. Patio restaurant eating is very popular in my state.

People sitting around the fire pit and patio heaters in their back yards talking and stuff wouldn't bother me. Loud, raucous laughter and booming music would, if it happened on a regular basis.

Also, the noise of people jogging and whatnot in the morning is not the same as children jumping on trampolines and shrieking and blasting music. 🙂

[lulalu]

15 hours ago, Bootsie said:

If you live in a detached-home neighborhood what would expect to be a reasonable amount of activity for a family to do in their driveway?  Think of a setup with a driveway for one house that runs along the side of the property but within six feet of the house next door (with a fence on the property line).  What type of activities?  Ladderball?  PingPong?  Skateboarding?  Tricycles? Playing music?  Art projects?  Would it matter how many hours per day/days per week it occurred?  Particular hours of the day it would be acceptable?  Would you be more or less tolerant of these activities during a pandemic?

All of that I would expect. It is your home noise and activity are part of living somewhere. 

Now, when neighbor's music rattle the inside of my home then music is too loud. That is about my only limit. 

I have lived in apartments for the past 10 years. We lived in small homes before that. Noise is much worse in apartments. But having neighbors you can see means there will be noise and activity. 

[teachermom2834]

We have a neighbor that plays video games all day and night really loud. It is like a loud base boom booming you can hear down the street. It feels like the house is shaking sometimes. That is the one noise that really gets to me. We won’t hear it for awhile and then he’ll be back at it for a few weeks. 
 

Kids playing is not a bother. And we have kids that play basketball across the street into the wee hours of the morning. I’m more prone to think little kids need sleep than to be bothered by the noise but I do think it is a bit unreasonable to be bouncing a basketball in the middle of the night. I’m pretty easy going so it doesn’t bother me but I wouldn’t let my kids do it and I can see people being annoyed.

I have been wondering about barking dogs. New neighbors leave their dog out during the day sometimes while they are gone and he barks all day. They seem to be leaving him out less so maybe they were hoping he would adjust. I don’t know the people and I don’t know that much about dog behavior but I have wondered if that is considered reasonable to leave a big dog barking from morning to evening. 
 

I think general noise from kids playing and yard work should be reserved for after 8:00 am on weekdays and after 9:00 am on weekends. Earlier than that seems intrusive. Evening hours seem more flexible to me. Except fireworks. Those are bad except 4th of July before midnight.

I actually like noise during the day. I grew up in a city and a completely quiet street makes me a bit uneasy. I like feeling like there is enough busyness around that someone would notice if someone was breaking into my house or bothering my dd when she took the dog out in the morning. I like a healthy amount of neighborhood activity. It makes me feel safer. I know people that grew up in the country feel the opposite.

[wintermom]

I think music playing (pre-recorded stuff, not live instruments) outside is annoying no matter what the house set-up is. Dogs barking non-stop is also annoying. 

Kids and adults playing is a joyful sound to me, no matter how loud or how long it lasts. Live instrumental music is also a great sound. I don't even mind drums, unless the drum kit is right up against my wall. 

[sassenach]

18 hours ago, Farrar said:

This is so individual by neighborhood. I feel like the norms expected by folks differ dramatically. Anyone in this thread who comes in and says it IS this way or that is not understanding how regional and community specific those sorts of norms are.

That said, around here, as long as people aren't screaming "JIM!" at the top of their lungs at 2 am (thanks, Jim's drunk friend last week) or playing music so loudly that even with the windows closed it interferes with my ability to watch TV or listen to my own music then it's a free for all in my book. People should get over themselves. But I also live in a city.

Thanks, Jim. 😂

I live in a tightly spaced neighborhood and for me it’s more about the time of day than the activity. Before 7am and after 10pm I would hope that people would bring their activities indoors. I have a neighbor with yappy dogs who sometimes lets them bark at 6 am and I find that to be unneighborly. But other than that, live your lives. 
 

@Neighborsfromhell is a funny insta account. 

[sassenach]

1 hour ago, teachermom2834 said:

 

I have been wondering about barking dogs. New neighbors leave their dog out during the day sometimes while they are gone and he barks all day. They seem to be leaving him out less so maybe they were hoping he would adjust. I don’t know the people and I don’t know that much about dog behavior but I have wondered if that is considered reasonable to leave a big dog barking from morning to evening. 

It’s not reasonable and I would have a talk with them. Our neighbor has nuisance barkers and occasionally I have to say something to her. She blames me for her doggie daycare bills but whatevs. 

[Ellie]

16 hours ago, hjffkj said:

I think any type of outdoor play is fine between 8am and 9pm.  But my children are outside all day long so I'm probably the neighbor people are annoyed at.  The neighbors across the street were actually upset with me because I let my kids play out front during school hours.  Not because they were be disruptive to their kids virtual schooling but because it wasn't fair to their children that mine could play outside when theirs couldn't.  I just told her she could always home school then she could let her kids out all day long if she wanted.  Her kids are almost NEVER outside.

Oh good grief. You probably handled that better than I would have.

[Bootsie]

11 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

I'm sure OUR neighbors think we're too loud right now! Let's just say, we weaned calves. That means that for 36 hours straight, the cows moo. Neighbors close to a mile away can hear it. And my dogs bark. All night long. They bark at coyotes, bears, mountain lions, you name it. However, folks moved to the country, so have to deal with it. 

It is interesting to think about the different noises in different places and how you get used to them and maybe don't even notice. Where we live now we can hear the bells from a church and the chimes from the university clock tower.  We are also near a train yard and the train switching can be very load in the middle of the night.  In addition, our house is right under the path the air lift helicopters use to take people to the hospital in the middle of the night.  But, I was visiting DD in an Austrian village earlier this year and wondered why it was so noisy in the middle of the night (4:30am)--but then realized after a few days it was the dairy farmers beginning their work day and the sound of the mild trucks.  And there is no way you sleep in on Sunday mornings there--the church bells ring and ring and ring...

 

[KungFuPanda]

12 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

I'm sure OUR neighbors think we're too loud right now! Let's just say, we weaned calves. That means that for 36 hours straight, the cows moo. Neighbors close to a mile away can hear it. And my dogs bark. All night long. They bark at coyotes, bears, mountain lions, you name it. However, folks moved to the country, so have to deal with it. 

I don’t know WHY people think the country is quieter. You just trade out for different noises! I grew up in the sticks and my populated suburban city is so much quieter.  There are no roosters, coal trains, screech owls, or random unleashed dogs. I don’t know about ranch land, but the woods are not quiet at night. I may hear more planes or ambulances on some days, but the overall noise level might be less even with closer neighbors.