Notice to cease noise nuisance

D-Man · 2011-07-10T20:29:54+00:00

The most important part of this post is at the end so if you don't feel like wasting time reading a random story, feel free to skip to the last few sentences. ? ? ? So a couple of days ago I'm in the garage jamming some songs out with my fellow guitarist and bassist when this man walks up to the gate handing me a brown envelope. Strangely my friend liked to believe it was a recording contract... NOOB! So we open it up and it's titled: "NOTICE TO CEASE NOISE NUISANCE" reading the find print at the bottom it states that if this "noise nuisance" doesn't stop, we could be imprisoned for a maximum of 2 years or fined no more than R20000 or both (When I say "we" I mean my parents because they own the place). I didn't know this was possible. When we had our first full on jam session with a drummer 3 weeks prior to this, an old man came to us and asked us to quiet down a bit. Despite the fact that the old man lives three houses down the road, we decided to give it a break for about 2 hours before jamming a little bit more. A week later we had another practice session scheduled and this time I insisted on some drum mutes. We took the drum mutes off the kick, snare and cymbals to maintain our sound quality so eventually they were pretty redundant. In both of these instances we only turned our two guitar amps and one bass amp loud enough to be heard over the drums. I read up a bit on the regulations and even though there is a specific decibel limit on some of the offences, there is no limit on a noise nuisance. Now the notice doesn't exactly bother me very much as we have asked many friends and colleagues from the law enforcement and legal sectors about the situation. They and some other information we gathered led us to believe that the old man pulled some strings and took some shortcuts in the process of issuing the complaint etc. However, this might become a regular thing and I do want to be a considerate neighbor so I want to do whatever I can to be less of a nuisance. My immediate neighbors have never said a thing. This is probably because we never practice earlier than 10am or later than 4pm and most people are at work during these times. So our time slot is perfect if you ask me but I need some advice on soundproofing the garage a little bit. It's a double garage, one side of which is a gym area and the other is where we jam, however there's usually a car parked in there. There is one really tiny window to one side of the garage and the doors are made of what seems to be thin corrugated iron. One of the doors is also missing it's rubber seal at the bottom. These are the two biggest 'sonic gaps' if you ask me. Any ideas on how I could improve the soundproofing properties of the garage for a very low cost so as to keep the neighbors happy when the drums are blaring?

Ray

You know what? If you carry on doing what you're doing what will happen? One day a car will pull up with police markings and out will jump two healthy round guys in blue clothes and stroll over with some sort of letter or warrant. And if you've got a couple of hundred on you then show it to them and tell them about the hell of a noise from this old guy with a chain saw just a few houses down that is driving you crazy. And I'll bet you they turn around and bugger off with your few hundred bucks. And that might happen a few times and when the old guy realizes that he is not getting anywhere, he'll either pack up and go or soundproof his possie. That's a win-win hey?

MIKA-the-better-one

Just take advantage of the fact you are in africa and the police cannot be bothered to enforce his bitching...
Give him a chance to work some times with you, face him head on and explain you will be practicing and what times work for him, try cooncide wit him.
If he is a complete idiot then just keep between 10am and 5pm. If you do it in 30min- 1hour runs you will be fine.

Really he is not going to do much, and you guys are young so renting a space is not an option, and it should not be. Just practice, dont worry to much about this situation. Its not very rock n roll to worry to much

Banditman

I'm going to agree with Alan, Riaan & Keira's advice, D-man.

Some people are simply nasty little scrotes who seem out to get their own back, in a cowardly bully way. Whether this chap is or isn't is besides the point. He has the ability to make your life miserable if you're not careful.

I'm a full time motorcycle riding instructor. The yard I use for training belongs to the local N.G. Kerk (amazing I know), and is located on a main road in a residential area. One side is bordered by a retirement village. In nearly two years I never had a single serious gripe. There were one or two but according to the church staff, they came from teh same old git who moaned about the bell being rung on Sunday morning, the grass being mowed etc. Their view is (bless 'em) the church has been there since '73 & the oldies since '99.

Until the day two muppets booked a short licence training course. They turned up with two superbikes: one had a loud race can, the other had borrowed a different bike (from the one he'd said he had) which effectively didn't have a silencer fitted. His version of a silencer basically wasn't.

Had they kept the revs down it wouldn't have been that bad, but no - they needed to hold them in every gear all the time. Now I love bikes, but even I got fed-up quickly and gave them a firm uit-kilo alpha kilo. Just as I was finishing, in drove an old boy to politely ask if we could turn it down - and he was an old biker himself.

No problems for the next few months until I had a booking from three Harley riders. Not reckless, not cocky, but their bikes were all fitted with Screamin' Eagle pipes. Not earsplitting, but you could feel the rumble. Cue two senior ladies claiming that even their deaf neighbours could hear it (thought they'd be overjoyed to hear something if they're deaf).

To get to the point: I dealt with it by listening to their gripes (and they were being miserable - it was 11 am on a week day & they just wanted to moan - you could tell), but by the time they left they were smiling & their feathers weren't ruffled anymore because I offered a solution first. I now screen all trainees and any superbikes, scramblers or Hogs with non-standard pipes are trained in another area. I can't afford to lose this venue needlessly, and time has shown that legally quieted bikes cause no issues next door.

Try speaking nicely to the guy, even if he acts like an a$$. At least you've done it. Perhaps go as far as recording the conversation on the QT with your phone. You'll have evidence of exactly who said what. Offer workable and reasonable solutions, and include all the surrounding neighbours. Lastly, don't throw the woodcutting at him in a tit for tat. Rather keep that as a trump card: the next time he does it, record it yourself & take pics.

But start out the right way. Most people are responsive or reactive in that they'll usually respond to your attitude and tone. You may just win him over if you don't act the hard case.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Talk to him. This is practice for life ?

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