> guy above you comes home at 2am and never takes his shoes off
He shouldn't have to IMO. Building codes should require buildings to be sound proof between units. Yea, I know that's dreaming but I've lived in such units. I once lived in an apartment in LA. It was the first apartment in my life that had an in-unit washer and dryer. I asked the guy showing me the apartment "I'll bet I shouldn't run that after 10pm". He responded "These apartments were built as condos and they have double concrete walls between units so your neighbors won't hear you. Feel free to run them anytime day or night". And, the 18 months I was there I never heard a noise from any other unit.
Conversely, I lived in a fairly typical SF place. Older and not designed for sound proofing. It was so bad that I mostly stayed out of my bedroom because the just being in it the guy downstairs would complain. Basically all I ever did was walk in, climb in bed. When I woke up, get out of the room. I felt for the guy, it must have been like a drum but at the same time I shouldn't have not been able to live in my apartment (oh, and I didn't wear shoes).
I had a guest room. Every single guest (friends, not AirBnB) would get yelled at their first night just trying to change out of their clothing into their pajamas.
The funniest one was a girl moved in downstairs. One night at 3am I moved my bed about 4 inches. A single move not making a sound for more than 1-2 seconds. The next morning she came up to bitch me out of waking her up. I told her I didn't complain about hearing her masturbate every night. I just put on my headphones and checked in 20 minutes. She moved out the next day.
I feel like the law should have made the landlord make that apartment more sound proof.
In my current place there's an industrial air conditioner running on the building next door. It runs 24/7 even though no one has been in the building during COVID. With any window open it's around 60db which is fine maybe when you're awake but it sucks when you're drying to go to sleep. With the windows closed it basically sounds like someone is running a vacuum cleaner in the room next door, all night.
Further, some, the city, or some company, comes by at 4am and empties trash cans. The pick them up and bang them. It takes them ~10 minutes to get them all. Everyone in the building has complained and AFAICT both of these are illegal.
> It runs 24/7 even though no one has been in the building during COVID.
With modern buildings, where all windows and walls are completely airtight and there is no natural draft any more because of energy efficiency, the buildings would start to mold if you turned off the ventilation.
They could, yes, but that depends on how much money the constructors spent. Some will go for the really fancy stuff that the janitor can fully control from their office, with everything relevant (air inlet and outlet temperature, tenant-individual air consumption, CO2 levels, ...) being measured and every tiny little actor (valves, bypasses, flaps) controlled in a carefully balanced flow that achieves optimal efficiency, while others will go for extremely dumb systems that offer little more control than "here's the circuit breaker, if you want more control you gotta climb to the roof and fiddle with the valves".
> Or put some lube on the device?
I doubt the problem is lube (unless it's actively creaking, and at that point the building management would be well advised to have the system inspected because that's a fire risk). Usually the problem is inadequate dimensions, caused (again) by financial decisions... basically, similar to a PC, the larger the fan the less RPM it needs to haul the same amount of air, and the less RPM it runs the quieter it is. Larger fan systems need more space (obviously) and are more expensive to purchase.
Well, regardless, AFAIK it's illegally loud according to the document linked above. So, if I'm correct, regardless of what they have to do and how much it costs they should be required to fix it.
He shouldn't have to IMO. Building codes should require buildings to be sound proof between units. Yea, I know that's dreaming but I've lived in such units. I once lived in an apartment in LA. It was the first apartment in my life that had an in-unit washer and dryer. I asked the guy showing me the apartment "I'll bet I shouldn't run that after 10pm". He responded "These apartments were built as condos and they have double concrete walls between units so your neighbors won't hear you. Feel free to run them anytime day or night". And, the 18 months I was there I never heard a noise from any other unit.
Conversely, I lived in a fairly typical SF place. Older and not designed for sound proofing. It was so bad that I mostly stayed out of my bedroom because the just being in it the guy downstairs would complain. Basically all I ever did was walk in, climb in bed. When I woke up, get out of the room. I felt for the guy, it must have been like a drum but at the same time I shouldn't have not been able to live in my apartment (oh, and I didn't wear shoes).
I had a guest room. Every single guest (friends, not AirBnB) would get yelled at their first night just trying to change out of their clothing into their pajamas.
The funniest one was a girl moved in downstairs. One night at 3am I moved my bed about 4 inches. A single move not making a sound for more than 1-2 seconds. The next morning she came up to bitch me out of waking her up. I told her I didn't complain about hearing her masturbate every night. I just put on my headphones and checked in 20 minutes. She moved out the next day.
I feel like the law should have made the landlord make that apartment more sound proof.
In my current place there's an industrial air conditioner running on the building next door. It runs 24/7 even though no one has been in the building during COVID. With any window open it's around 60db which is fine maybe when you're awake but it sucks when you're drying to go to sleep. With the windows closed it basically sounds like someone is running a vacuum cleaner in the room next door, all night.
Further, some, the city, or some company, comes by at 4am and empties trash cans. The pick them up and bang them. It takes them ~10 minutes to get them all. Everyone in the building has complained and AFAICT both of these are illegal.
https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/ehsdocs/ehsnoise/guidelinesn...
But so far it's been impossible to get anything enforced.