The Sounds Of Spring In The Suburbs Make Me Crazy!

[wannahelp]

There is not a day or scarcely a moment that passes in the Spring, in my neighborhood, when there isn’t a lawnmower, woodchipper, leaf blower, chain saw or other earth-defiling piece of machinery assaulting my acoustic nerves. These machines drone on from late March into December (leaves). Forget about sleeping late on the weekends.

Are your neighborhoods noisy in Spring and Summer?

 

[1CatOverTheLine]

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I'm in the country, not the suburbs; our median age is somewhere in the Upper Methuselahan range, and our local ordinances require five contiguous acres before one can build - the result of that being that homes are typically a few hundred feet apart. That said, while lawns are generally on the large side (mine is roughly six acres), there's only one person mowing them. In the suburbs, lot sizes are much smaller - typically six homes to the acre in the U.S. - so that where you'll hear the sound of a single (well-muffled) diesel tractor here on 26 acres, in the suburbs, you'd be treated to the sound of 156 high-pitched hand-mowers in the same area - and no doubt, spread across every daylight hour, seven days a week.

We haven't any "special" noise ordinances here, but we do have common courtesy. No one starts a machine before ten in the morning, no one mows after six in the evening, and no one mows on Sunday. If a neighbour is having an outdoor event on a Saturday, his or her neighbours refrain from mowing then as well, and since the median age is about 139, no one cares, since everyone is retired, and hasn't a fixed schedule.

Now and then, in late Autumn, you'll hear a leaf blower, but I don't know anyone within shouting distance here who doesn't have a bagger on their tractor, and hence leaf blowers have no purpose. Chain saws are seldom heard, save for after serious wind storms, and the only wood chippers you'll hear belong to the Town, since all one needs do is to pile branches at the curbside, and taxes take care of the rest.

As with everything in Life, it's a trade-off. The suburbs are convenient (I'm an hour away from the three major cities in the area), but tend toward being somewhat lacking in neighbourly relations; the countryside is peaceful, but requires an Everest Base Camp style trek just for a quart of milk.
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[DreamerRose]

None of those bother me. They are just the sounds of the suburbs. And in addition, you can hear the chickadees, cardinals, and other birds as well as fountains splashing. I love all of it.

 

[rgwanner]

I live in a condo. We have the landscape guys twice a month and I usually have gone to work by the time they started. What drives me crazy is that there are 3 dogs in a fenced yard near us. They bark almost constantly. The "diner" where I feed my outside cats is near the fence, which might be why they bark. I don't want to complain because I am not really supposed to be feeding the cats.
When I go out in the morning it is loud with all the birds which I love.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I live on a country road; but I have neighbors all around me. The noise here is SOOOO much more pleasant than my old neighborhood where we'd get everything from police activity to music from drunk people... (ETA: I forgot the kid with a dirt bike!!) This is nothing!

We get farm trucks regularly and the field behind us gets mowed and baled a few times a year. The worst noise we get is the crop duster that starts about 5:30 in the morning. Now THAT makes every other noise seem like music. Fortunately it's not done by our house that often.

 

[mani]

It's those leaf-blower things that annoy me. I want to call out, 'for heaven's sake, get a rake!'.

 

[denice]

I don't really mind that type of noise. When we are having a really hot humid summer which has been several years ago now it does start early. I understand wanting to get yard work done early in the morning before the heat ramps up again. I am bothered much more by things like loud music, loud parties and loud vehicles none of which are an issue here.

 

[foxxycat]

Lawn machines never bother me. It's the tin rin box cars with loud exhausts that buzz by several times a day that annoy me. Loud music doesn't bother me since I am half deaf. Police activity doesn't bother me either-since it means I am getting my tax dollars worth lol.

We have ATV vehicles that buzz through my neighborhood to the trails down the road-and that doesn't bother me because they are going out into the woods-anyone going into the woods is better than sitting at home watching TV. So that's a plus! Chain saws don't bother me. Leaf blowers are annoying but I want one for snow storms so I can blow the snow off my roof if it's fluffy. We run our snow blowers at 6am since some of us have to get to work-not much I can do about that. We try to keep it quiet after 8pm but sometimes the snow blower is run at 8pm instead of 6am.

Last night was scraping of shovels against tar because of the dozens of pounds of sand left behind from the winter=they used to bring a street sweeper through but haven't had one in 3 years-the sand is starting to get annoying since most of my grass has a 1" layer of it. The scraping of shovels annoys me! But It's got to be done.

Never seen anyone with wood chippers here-not enough trees to clear. So guess I am pretty easy to get along with.

 

[kashmir64]

My closest neighbor is about 1/2 mile away, so I don't get the normal machinery sounds. But, out here, people like to target practice. Someone, about a mile west of me, has what I swear is a cannon he shoots off on the weekends. A lawn mower is much more acceptable to me than shots being fired all the time. Even if it is only at a target.

 

[engine4154]

I was thinking that last night when I got home and heard all the noise on either side. Then I remembered my own mower needed work...then a kid knocked on the door and asked if I wanted the lawn mowed for 10 bucks. Sold. Now it's quiet on Saturday.

 

[cheeser]

I don't mind the noise of lawn equipment at all. I just wish people would bag their leaves, or compost them or something, instead of using a leaf blower to blow them down the storm drains. As the saying goes, it floods here if someone so much as spits into an intersection. So clogging up the drains with leaves and other lawn debris doesn't exactly help.

The only noise that really bothers me is when people drive insanely fast on our little street to zigzag between two major thoroughfares. Ever since a guy lost control of his car after rounding the corner and crashed into our yard, I get a wee bit nervous any time a car sounds too darned close for comfort.

 

[wannahelp]

We have all the sounds of speeding screeching cars, thumping radios from the kids next door, the municipal leaf suckers, and the usual sirens and rowdy kids plus the lawn equipment. I guess it’s worse for me because I’m home all day.
For a while, the kids next door decided it would be fun to congregate at 1130pm and converse, play football in the street, then start their deafeningly-loud modded car engines and drive away. That was during the early Winter months.