What's acceptable?
My daughter had a leaving party for a friend at our house Saturday. We had about 30 aged between 17 and 20 and odly they didn't play any music.
At about 1am the neighbour knocked and opened up with 'now I don't want to fall out with you but' so I said I'll quieten them down, then he kicked off threatening to call the police told me they were to young and that they were swearing loud enough for the whole street to hear. TBH I just shut the door in his face.
I then took the dog out and I couldn't hear a thing….until they went out for a smoke and talked, is that enough to get wound up over.
Anyway because of his approach I didn't tell them to be quiet and I went to bed.
I was just wondering if there was some sort of know cut off time for parties? and I thought there was no law in talking whilst on the pavement.

why didn't you let them borrow your gramophone? you're such a mean oldgit 😀

Because they couldn't plug their earpods into it.

As a one-off the police aren't going to do a great deal other than ask them to keep it down if they think they are being unreasonable.

But I would take a bottle of red around to your neighbour and say sorry if it inconvenienced him – no point falling out over it. (But I think he was being unreasonable if your account is correct. And they are hardly too young to party at that age).

When I used to have parties "back in the day" I made up flyers and posted them to all the houses within a 100m radius. Didn't have a single complaint when I did that.

I was just wondering if there was some sort of know cut off time for parties?

Noise cut off is 11pm I think, thats when our music would go down, but not off. What constitutes as noise I don't know, but I'm guessing its a lot louder than some people talking in the garden.

Most neighbours don't have a problem if its one night, and they've been told in advance.

As above, one offs or should I say fairly infrequent noise isn't really a problem, we all have noisy things we do occasionally. But on work-nights, going on all night and unreasonably loud I'd say were off limits. This doesn't seem unreasonable or a work night, I'd have liked to have been told if it were my neighbours having a party so I could plan etc, so I think it's a bit of an over-reaction by them.

I like my quiet, I like my house to be my sanctuary where I can sleep without being woken by people making a noise (it doesnt even have to be loud TBH, just people walking about the flat above or talking loud enough to almost be heard is enough to keep me up all night, which puts me in a very very bad mood as I have sleep issues). But you can't force people to never have a social gathering, and give and take is needed in a situation where houses are linked. When I have gatherings we always try to keep it quiet after 11ish and earlier if there are kids staying at any of he neighbours. Having 30 teenagers around though, fairly sure the best option for all would have been to hire out a cheap local club, saving annoyance of neighbours and giving teenagers a bit more freedom.

No I won't be apologising, he is a miserable git and he doesn't bother me a bit.
He really does deserve an award though. An example. He was trying to sell his house. However he didn't want a sign and didn't want anyone coming at weekends so it didn't sell! he actually went to the estate agents and told them it was because my dog barked. A very apologetic estate agent paid us a visit, she came in met me and the missus and the said dog and explained the situation. I then noticed the grumpy gits wife in the garden, and said watch this. I let the dog out and it started to bark then imediately stopped when she started throwing dog biscuits over the fence. I've told her about giving our dog food and that's why it barks when shes there.
I've got loads more, his a classic.

Your behaviour & the party sounds reasonable to me. Last night I had a neighbour cutting laminate flooring up outside their house at 9.30pm, then hammering soemthing at 11.30pm. Thats a **** pain, they "hide" behind the fact that the adults in the house are profoundly deaf, yet both the kids are able to hear perfectly. They're not the most pleasant of people and over the last 12 months or so there has been some history develop between us & them, greatly around teenage noise issues etc.

Contrast that with another neighbour whose daughter had a party a few weeks ago. Delivered notes to all the houses in the road explaing what was happening, that noise would be kept to a minimum, here is my parents mobile number. As it happened the party went off without any noise, I was asleep apparently well before the supposed end time.

What I would say is that noise does seem to carry more at night, and a reasonable daytime conversation volume will seem much more obtrusive at night, not that your neighbour was right in his approach.

Maybe she'd mistakenly thought that throwing biscuits would stop the dog barking when it originally started doing it way back when? I hate people who own dogs and let them out barking at all hours of the day and seem to be immune to their noise – totally antisocial and can wreck peoples lives [might seem like an exaggeration, but it isn't]. Have you pointed out to her that thats why the dog barks, or just asked her not to give it food? They sounda bit odd anyway, bad luck getting neighbours like that!

Our neighbours (not the same ones) left a Yorkie out in the garden for 4 months last year until it got removed. Would snarl & bounce off the fence everytime our dog went out, was really tempted to lift a fence panel and let the brave little shit figure that picking on a staffordshire bull terrier from the other side of a fence was better than face to face.

This year they've taken to putting their two whinging kids in the garden. Might still put the dog under the fence anyway.

My mum's neighbour (behind her house) had a dog which would, on opening the door to let it out for its morning motions, run to the fence and bark repeatedly at our house for no other reason than we had a cat. It would go on for hours sometimes and would wake me up every weekend morning.

One day they took it out for a walk and another dog ran up, grabbed it in its jaws, ran off with it and killed it. I was very upset. 8)

No it barks because she feeds it because they don't have a dog anymore.
It really doesn't bother me at all. We used to get on before he retired.

I think he is bitter because he couldn't sell up, then he sold it to one of these companies that buys it but lets you live there? and now seriously regrets it.
I did feel for him, but he is bordering on nasty now.

m_f – I used to have just such a neighbour who would let the dog out, it woudl be silent until it wanted to get back in but they had gone back to bed and left it outside until 7:30, barking. After 6 months of being woken up at 5am EVERY day they were served with papers telling them that they were either to shut the dog up or it/they would be removed/fined. Took a lot of getting there, logging, sound measurement kit etc etc. I was very tempted to skip the investigation part and simply remove the dog myself but once the process had been put in motion it would be immediately obvious who had done it, and I didn't want to harm the dog after all, I just wanted the owners to have some sense of responsibility.

We never went there – I think my parents didn't want to upset their neighbours so they just put up with it. Unfortunately for me, it was my room that backed onto theirs. Fortunately for me they had two daughters of a similar age to me 8)

I'm guessing its a lot louder than some people talking in the garden.

Most neighbours don't have a problem if its one night, and they've been told in advance.

I disagree with the first half but not with the second.

FWIW, I used to live above a disco and across from a bar. Because of the weird architecture, I didn't hear the music inside at all – but you don't realise how loud and annoying drunk teenagers outside smoking and braying at each other are. It can be really piercing and aggravating – much worse than a repetitive dull beat IMO.

But having said that – if you don't live on a moor, you have to accept that every now and again, your neighbours are going to have a party, and it doesn't sound like the OP did anything outrageous.

One off late nights are not a problem, tough.
It's when you have a neighbour who is persistantly noisy that it's difficult to live with. Ours is a nightmare, it's like the whole family take part in it too.

Kid screams all the time, the dog barks all the time, the bloke has a motorbike which he fires up late at night, the woman listens to music really loud either dead early or dead late.

Ironically both neighbours smoke like chimneys so we keep the back windows shut, far more offensive than one nights noise.

Ironically both neighbours smoke like chimneys so we keep the back windows shut, far more offensive than one nights noise.

Totally agree, it's horrible having smoke wafting into the house and the smell hangs around for ages.