Every three to six months in my apartment block someone decides to get the workmen in. There follows at least two weeks or longer of hardcore drilling, hammering , banging and crashing. It starts around 8 am and goes on intermittently through the day until evening. This includes weekends. The walls reverberate and inordinate amounts of masonry and sundries are removed ( God! are they taking down load-bearing walls!!). It drives me crazy and no one else seems to care. I have known several people who have had similar experiences where they live. Has anyone else known this?
What they hell are they doing?
Why do they have to do it so often?
Why does it take them so long?
I would love to see what kind of palace they are creating.
Is this just a Taiwan thing?
I have lived in several countries and have never known people to be so renovation obsessed, or may I say inconsiderate to their neighbours. ( oh wait a minute there was an old Spanish witch in Madrid who use to bang on my door at all hours and demand I wash the stairs for her so I retract that last)
[quote=“white rajah”]Every three to six months in my apartment block someone decides to get the workmen in. There follows at least two weeks or longer of hardcore drilling, hammering , banging and crashing. It starts around 8 am and goes on intermittently through the day until evening. This includes weekends. The walls reverberate and inordinate amounts of masonry and sundries are removed ( God! are they taking down load-bearing walls!!). It drives me crazy and no one else seems to care. I have known several people who have had similar experiences where they live. Has anyone else known this?
What they hell are they doing?
Why do they have to do it so often?
Why does it take them so long?
I would love to see what kind of palace they are creating.
Is this just a Taiwan thing?
I have lived in several countries and have never known people to be so renovation obsessed, or may I say inconsiderate to their neighbours. ( oh wait a minute there was an old Spanish witch in Madrid who use to bang on my door at all hours and demand I wash the stairs for her so I retract that last)[/quote]
Two weeks ?I had it in one apartment in my building for 10 months! Lay the concrete, forget pipe A and jack hammer it up, lay the concrete and forget water pipe c - jack hammer it up ad infinitum. Nearly went nuts. I regularly drop cat turds into their fish pond from my balcony.
what it most likely is is someone getting their flooring replaced. They use airdriven or electric mini jackhammer things with chisel tips.
If you have a few floors, there is a good chance that no matter which floor it’s happening, it will sound like it’s one floor above.
It just goes on an on in Taipei and there is not thing one you can do about it. My building just had two, count 'em. two apartments renovated at the same time. Went on for weeks. I lke to sleep late but the jackhammering starts at the crack of dawn. Oh, and does it stop at 5:00? NNnnnooooooooooo! Banging has gone one after midnight.
People just don’t give a s**t about other people’s peace here and I would be surprised to find any building with rules again it (at least that are enforced). A friend lives in a a condo complex in Thailand and there are strict rules there about what time all remodeling noise must cease and none is allowed on the weekend. Has anyone ever called the cops on a disturbing the peace complaint? I’m sure you would be laughed at by both the cops and the offenders.
I have lived in several countries and have never known people to be so renovation obsessed, or may I say inconsiderate to their neighbours. ( oh wait a minute there was an old Spanish witch in Madrid who use to bang on my door at all hours and demand I wash the stairs for her so I retract that last)[/quote]
Pretty simple explanations:
Taiwan is really densely populated, so the noise/mess is literally in your face.
Taiwanese workers don’t seem to take breaks on weekends compared with many other countries. Or their pay is the same on weekends as weekdays, so it doesn’t matter. I know that I’d have to pay an arm and a leg and more body parts if I wanted to get a builder/repairman in on the weekends in Europe.
Taiwan workmanship and building materials are of such poor quality that they need to be refurbished every few years or so? (this is a crazy thought, no facts to back it up though…but after living here for a while, the thought doesn’t sound that crazy afterall! :s )
[quote=“Interlocutor”]
People just don’t give a s**t about other people’s peace here[/quote]You got that straight. [quote=“Interlocutor”]… I would be surprised to find any building with rules against it (at least that are enforced).[/quote]Oh, they exist alright. Too bad I couldn’t afford to buy an apartment in one of them.
I think people don’t give a shit about other people’s peace because they don’t need it as much as we do. I have friends here who can sleep through bulldozers. You whistle and my roommate will wake up in the next city. So the fact that we have construction here 50% of the time KILLS her.
I just go to bed earlier.
My wife now calls the cops when noise is after 10pm weekdays and after 7pm weekends, because that seems to be illegal, they said. And of course, she wonders why I care…
Yeah, one apartment after the other, weekends, morning, night, they hammer and hammer and hammer and drill, because the locals are immune to noise. And here, they do not call the painter when moving in somewhere, they jackhammer away the walls and rebuild them.
Our livingroom celing has a crack after the jackhammering, around the lamp. Gulp.
Moving into own house soon. Though this has two neighbours in the row (shiver).
Every other country I had been to was MUCH louder than my home. Taiwan beats it though.
[quote=“SuchAFob”]I think people don’t give a shit about other people’s peace because they don’t need it as much as we do. I have friends here who can sleep through bulldozers. You whistle and my roommate will wake up in the next city. So the fact that we have construction here 50% of the time KILLS her.
I just go to bed earlier.[/quote]
So you mean you guys don’t have a silent environment where most of the time (even in day time) the only sounds you here are the soft wind and the noise of the fan or the computer in your own house?
That’s a shame. Besides the weekends (more kids and people around) I even have my peace in daytime and the last renovation was about 5 months ago.
Greetings from the silent and green hills down south of Taipei.
