This has been a challenging year with so many people spending so much time at home, and it seems worth reminding people that our condo documents do specify “quiet hours.”

“Owners, guests and tenants are expected to reduce noise levels between the hours of 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM, so neighbors are not disturbed. At no time are musical instruments, radios or televisions to be so loud as to become a nuisance.”

Sound transfer in this building tends to be more of an up-down problem than a side-to-side one, and some activities can be an issue that one might not expect. Midnight is not the time to start vacuuming or to be pacing extra laps around the living room. Anything happening on the living room floor late in the evening is happening over the heads of people trying to sleep below.

A little consideration goes a long way. Please try to be responsive to any neighbor concerns, or even proactive if something special is going on. We had an upstairs neighbor offer us his contact info when he had construction going on, and a downstairs neighbor we’d never met once slipped an invite to a party under our door so that we could be part of the fun if things got noisy (pre-pandemic, of course).

The flip side is to have reasonable expectations. This is a large building in the middle of a city. My husband and I run a fan of some type year round in our bedroom—either a humidifier, a box fan, or an air purifier—which masks the ka-thunk of our heat pump cycling on and off as well as most street or building noise.

And a disclaimer/reminder: This website is run by a volunteer and is not an official website, although said volunteer is reimbursed for expenses. I mention this fact in a post periodically and it’s in the footer on every other page of the site. Posts here represent my own (reasonably informed) opinion; I do NOT speak for the Board or the Management.