Any luck with the EPA?

Happy ending!
We discovered it was our next door neighbors blasting the racket. We went over 2 nights ago at 10pm when it was loud and asked them to turn it down. Its a sharehouse, and the older gentleman living there was the one who answered the door. He told the noisemaker living in the backroom of our grievance, and we haven’t heard the music since.
So yay! No more doof.

Forgot to add, (and reminded by #19), I did approach the minister for barking dogs – which happened to be the Chiefly One. Got a great level of interest from his advisor – in a face to face meeting no less. Should add that the barking dog department, otherwise known as Domestic Animal Services, who should have been checking out our complaint, had been through a complete meltdown and had sat on our enquiry for 6 months and had completely missed the boat on making a case out of it.

I would definitely try the Ministers office. Forget the local member though. I’m still owed a letter from my one who is infact no longer from a promise he made three years ago.

They use noise like this to torture prisoners. If the EPA aren’t useful, get onto your local government member. This problem won’t go away. People are living in greater proximity than ever before, and people have greater ability to make loud noise than ever before.

Governments who are bleating about Big Australia and Growth need to step up and deal with this issue. You can have 10 households who are considerate, and one that is inconsiderate, and you have a problem.

you can call the police if it is before 7 or after 11.

our noise menace knew that – she played her acdc at full bore only within those hours exactly.

epa will come out – they could barely hear me on the phone over her music, but they will stand on your property to take a reading, so it is then obvious who made the complaint.

I can’t even work out what house it is coming from. It sounds like the one diagonally across from us x2, but when I go for a walk down the cul-de-sac that runs parallel to our house, you can’t hear anything. The doof from the bass seems to float up the slight hill right up to our place.
I worked up the balls to confront them this morning but when I walked down it was silent. Upon my arrival back home I could hear it again.
It started at about 6am this morning 🙁

The EPA were able to tell me over the phone the noise was likely exceeding decibel limits, but during the day it was at their discretion whether to take action or not and the man felt that people are entitled to enjoy hobbies and activities. So with great embarrassment I explained that I was a new mum, I explained about the breast-feeding let-down reflex. I explained what stress can do to it . . . and the man very generously said if the noise was still a problem in six months I should call back.
From my experience and others I am aware of, the EPA are a waste of time for noise. I can also believe the comment about the laws being inadequate for infrasonics, we went through a period of that later in our new home, fortunately it was typically only for a couple of hours once a week, but there’s no escape from it because no matter what you do to block the noise you can still feel it. I really sympathise with anyone who is going through it.

Pull the fuse plug out of their external power box and bin it. That should keep the neibourhood quiet for a while.

Had some experience with the EPA when the Tuggers homestead decided to hold a full on C&W festival all weekend about a year ago.

I called and they said that unless there was another complaint they would not come out. Thought I’d done my dash, but turns out someone else did call but was not willing to let his property be used for the reading, so he called me back. He turned up and tried for quite sometime to get a reading. Whilst he could tell it was way over, he was not able to get an adequate reading because of a busy road and the wind.

Anyway, we had to endure the C&W at high volume all weekend – including their abuse of the deadlines for turning it off, but they did contact the venue on the Monday and let them know that they could not just hold festivals whenever they wanted to and that in future they would need permission etc etc. Since then, it’s not been a problem.

Having looked through the legislation, it seems to be again one of those things where the onus is on the agrieved party to prove there is a problem. Having just waded through a very long period of time fighting the neighbour over a barking dog, I wish you luck. We won that battle by the way!

My tip – don’t give up. Keep raising the issue with police, EPA etc etc as much as possible. Try to find out if it’s tenants – if it is you can approach their real estate agency. No one likes a bad tenant, and there must be other people who are offended. Try canvassing other neighbours if you feel confident enough.

Good luck.

The timing is consistent with students in holiday mode. Keep an eye open for visiting parents and then dob on the brats.

Actually my friends and I looked pretty tough as students but if you’d told me you were working shifts and I was keeping you awake I’d have been mortified. Don’t be shy to at least drop them a note.

Hmm, 10pm on a Sunday night and they are at it again, though not so bad this time. I can just hear the vvvv….vvvvv of the bass. Still rude though.
And no, I don’t think there is any time they are not home. My husband and I both work really random shift work hours and in the last month the music has been almost continuous most days. It just stops for a few hours occasionally. Probably so they can so their drug run.
I will give the EPA a call, although there are a few excellent solutions, particulary the Dynamic Lifter idea.
My husband did suggest that I empty the contents of our cat litter tray all over their front door step, while he takes a dump on the windscreen of their car…

Homeless # 7 + 1