Early morning construction/renovation

There’s got to be some sort of regulation on what time people can start sawing and jack-hammering away. What is it, 8:00 or 9:00 am?

Wife and daughter are asleep… probably not for long. I’m wondering how polite* I ought to be when I ask if it isn’t just a wee bit early for the table saw and router to be running immediately beneath our bedroom.

*I’m just a wee bit grumpy because three days of infant high fever came to an end last night, and its going to take some time to catch up on the zzz…

[quote=“Jaboney”]There’s got to be some sort of regulation on what time people can start sawing and jack-hammering away. What is it, 8:00 or 9:00 am?

Wife and daughter are asleep… probably not for long. I’m wondering how polite* I ought to be when I ask if it isn’t just a wee bit early for the table saw and router to be running immediately beneath our bedroom.

*I’m just a wee bit grumpy because three days of infant high fever came to an end last night, and its going to take some time to catch up on the zzz…
[/quote]

Early morning starts are understandable given the heat, but I would say anything before seven is inconsiderate. For city folks make that eight?

There’s a small noodle factory two doors from my place that kicks to life at about 4.30; sometimes I get woken by the noise of people shouting at each other, um, I mean chatting in Taiwanese, and then I have heavy machinery (cranes and trucks) warming up across from my house at about seven.

Tis life in Taiwan I’m afraid.

its the construction season bro…all around me the jack hammers are a-buzz. went to carnage yesterday for lunch to get away from it…lo and behold they was digging up the street there.

plus i got feral cats caterwauling all night…gunna get meself a new set of ear plugs today.

Yeah, but I live in the last building on a dead-end lane, off of a small road, off of a smallish road. There’s a small park across the street and a very large garden beyond that. It’s q-u-i-e-t here. It’s really quiet, save for one building across the way where the jackhammers start up at 9:00, and now the ‘Energy Expert’ renovating his shop under my bedroom. And really, who uses a router at 8:00 am? That’s no decent time to be cabinet making.

As much as I hate the noise myself, I don’t think them starting after 8am is so wrong. Hopefully they’ll finish quickly.

I think the rule is 8am, but like all rules, it means nothing without enforcement.

According to the woman who owns the cafe downstairs (in Da an district) the law is 6:00 a.m. for public work i.e. road construction although that law is void if there is an “emergency” need. For residential, entertainment, or businesses, there’s not a specific time, it’s based decibel level during certain hours. The Noise Control Standards are absolutely Byzantine…check this out:
law.epa.gov.tw/en/laws/844578960.html

Anyway, having been through this (tangentially, as a co-tenant of a building–I didn’t make the call), there’s no real recourse. If you complain about it, they send out a minimum of one guy with a sound level meter and if the noise breaks one of the NCS, they give a warning. If they have to come out a second time, there might be a citation. This is futile. The first thing the NCS guy does is tell the “offender” that he’s here to check the noise levels.

One of the advantages to living in a larger building or housing complex is they usually have more stringent rules on construction noise. Where I have lived in Changhua City and Taoyuan City, the building rule was no construction before 9am on weekdays and no construction on the weekends. Security guards called or came to enforce this in both cases. In one of those cases we were the guilty party.

I never get bothered by construction unless it is before 8am. I feel like 8am is the perfect time as many people work 8- ?.

Ah, we had roads being ripped open in Hsinchu STARTING at 2 AM until 6 AM.
But its a major road so… I think the best way to protect yourself is to have proper double glassed windows (they are very rare in Taiwan). And of course if you are renting, you are really out of luck… only option should be earplugs.

Unfortunately noise is part of living in Taiwan (China is worse). It starts inside restaurants (where you can hear people talking sooooo loud on the other side of the room you could actually follow a conversation) and ends with little advertisement trucks on Sunday mornings that sell crap for 20 NT (and wake you up).

I gave up educating them a long time ago.