Search the Community

Hi there, not sure if this is the place to discuss this but I just want to try my luck and see if anyone has something to share from their personal experience. My neighbour living upstairs has been generating tons of noise (heavy long periods of stomping from kids, very loud sudden knock, furniture dragging, banging doors, etc) everyday for the past several months. As you might have guessed, it has caused me plenty of sleepless night, my elderly parent to wake up from their nap/sleep, unable to focus on my work, etc. Initially, I tried to approach them peacefully by writing several notes on different occasions to bring the issue to their attention. We even suggested to use very simple, effective and inexpensive means to reduce the noise. Unfortunately, they don't seem to care to do anything to reduce the noise. I mean, how hard can it be to provide playmats for your children if you can't control hyperactive kids? How difficult is it to use softpads on your furniture? Anyway, my patience grew thin as paper after several months of tolerating their noises. So, I made a police report but they redirected me to the HDB. HDB officer eventually made a call to my neighbour and advise them to lower down their noise and honestly, there wasn't any improvement at all. (In fact, my neighbour was unhappy about it) So I took the matters into my own hands. I began closing my windows and doors loudly, and occasionally thump my ceiling whenever they made any loud noise just to let them have a taste of it. Eventually, after several days, my neighbour came running down to my unit furiously. He began shouting at me, accusing me of vandalism (from the notes I paste with masking tape outside his door), whining about my complain to HDB, how he almost kill his son while trying to discipline him, etc. All the while, I was trying to calm him down (although I was the victim here) and tried to talk peacefully. Eventually, he calm down to listen and we were able to sort things out peacefully. After that day, we did notice there was less noise coming from their unit. But after a week or so, they went back to their old ways. Thus, knowing that reporting to the police, approaching the HDB for assistance and direct confrontation does not help to improve the situation, I am thinking of soundproofing the ceiling to reduce the noise. Any advice or personal experience from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.