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Ugh. That reminds me, this morning I was woken up by the sound of some sort of hideous/screaming/singing/multiple-F-bombs/music across the street from somebody's parked car - at 4:55am. AUGH. So wrong. I'll take a leaf blower over that any day.

...and if it is only a handful of leaves, no need for the gas-powered leaf blower. My neighbors don't quite get this yet....or that 8am is way too early for gas-powered anything.

i work swing shift (2:30-11pm) so i usually don't get up till noonish. all of these are too early for me...

I think this varies by where you live. 7am is fair game here in the central Midwest.

In New York, all hours are fair game for noise. Luckily, in my neighborhood, there are no lawns to speak of, only the 7 train and garbage trucks. You get used to those. When I lived in the Midwest, I developed a hatred of a particularly lazy neighbor who had gas powered lawn mowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers, and hedge trimmers, which he used at all hours of the day and night. Is it really so difficult to use a rake?

I am a public utility contractor. Monday- Friday we start @ 7am. If we must work on a Saturday we do our best to start @ 8am. Yes it is early, but what neighbors seems to forget is that we start our day at our shop at 5:45, drive before the heavy Boston commute begins to the jobsite location. In my line of work we are there to improve infrastructure so the neighbors come around once the realize the benefits.

I recently told my neighbors how much I hated them. They were moving out at 8am on a Saturday which happened to be the first day I'd had off in five weeks. Literally five weeks.

It wasn't their fault, but I really really hated them a lot.

I wish birds would abide by the 9 am rule. I like birds at all hours except 5:30 am.

7am - week days
8am (tho preferably 9am) - weekends

Amen to the "birds" comment! I've got some bigtime squawkers -- 5am is too freakin' early! I'm buying a SuperSoaker to bust up their fun tomorrow! (water only, of course) Muwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

First let's ban loud pipes that are allowed to harass entire neighborhoods while their riders wear earplugs to protect themselves from these unbearably loud exhaust pipes.

I'm guessing that most cities, like my city Portland, have rules for these things. I think in Portland it is 8AM and they do crack down if you complain. There have also been proposals floated around to ban the damn leaf blower things since they emit not only noise but a gross (no pun intended) amount of carbon.

Our contractor informed us that 7am is legal fair game in the city of San Francisco.

I live next door to a blind rooster!!!! Seriously.
Cocka-Doodle-doo begins at 3, 4, 5am depending on the morning.

7AM weekdays
8AM weekends

8 weekdays
noon weekends!

Make hay while the sun shines. I'll try to start with the quieter things, but eventually I'm going to have to pick up momentum and accomplish things or start to feel the day is lost. All my windows face east, so there is a real lack of light eventually. If I don't get a lot more done early, I start to lose pace and also try to wind down the evening noise and end my day so I can relax that I've earned! I'm up, so I don't mind a lot of noise by 8 am, but I try to wait until about 9 am on a weekend to start making all the noise I like, hypothetically, with home improvements in mind and not just being a shithead making everyone listen to my stereo or electric guitar hobby playing. I'm not constantly using this self-applied noise-making home-improvement privilege either, so I think that wins strategy. When you're respectful most of the time, your neighbors won't bear the persistent burden of having to live under or beside you if you have to undertake the occasional project.

But the world must also try to understand that, for some people, in order to get on a roll, they have to sneak up on it in the dark or else it escapes.

i sleep though everything so i dont really care

I personally would prefer nothing before 10:00, but my city (Lincoln, Neb) does at least have noise ordinances. Mowers, etc., before 8:00 am are against the law, and I can deal with that.

Definitely nothing before 8 am, and leafblowers should be banned everywhere. What a wasteful piece of equipment. My neighbor gets his out and uses it for an hour after each mowing session, no less than twice a week. And since he doesn't start mowing until 7 pm, it means I have to hear annoying motor noises until at least 9 pm. I want to relax, darnit! And my kids go to bed at 7!

I'm ok with contstruction work early in the morning. They're there for a reason. It's the loud cars, music and the motorcycle repair shop that seems to be operating in my apartment's garages that bother me.

A lot of the gardening should actually be done earlier in the day so it doesn't stress the plants.

I usually mow the lawn around 10 am. The earliest I would mow would be 9 am because we have neighbors that work strange hours (police officer, train driver, etc) and I think they should be able to expect no noise in our neighborhood between 9 pm and 9 am.

Kids aren't normally bothered by noise unless their parents have trained them to be bothered.

I also work 2pm-11pm, so anything before 10am is far too early for me. Especially the neighbor's FIVE barking dogs that are especially raucous between 5am and 9am. Ear plugs Ambien the "waterfall" setting on my clock radio = the only way I can get my eight hours.

I work a lovely 3rd shift, if I was a mean and awful person as soon as I got home at 7:30am I'd mow the lawn. But since the grass doesn't dry untill around 9am I wait untill then, which means it's just hot when I'm done!

I do all my work at night (sometimes I don't get to bed until six or seven am), so I'd seriously prefer it if people would just be quiet. What's with all this blasted noise anyway?

I grew up in Houston, and it was soooo freakin' hot that people would do yard work at 6am! It was the only time in the day that you wouldn't die from the heat.

First let's ban loud pipes that are allowed to harass entire neighborhoods while their riders wear earplugs to protect themselves!!!

So well timed! On my morning walk to the train, I passed my neighbors landscaper blowing 5 leaves and some dirt down the side walk with a gas leaf blower! You come 3 days a week, just sweep it up!

First let's ban loud pipes that harass entire neighborhoods while their riders wear earplugs to protect themselves!!!

I HATE leaf blowers. Rake and broom, folks.

I think there should be a time window for this stuff -- 10:00AM - 2:00PM. This way, you know exactly when you can schedule something. Some people in my neighborhood get up early for yard work and others procrastinate until around dinnertime to mow their lawn -- so Saturdays and Sundays are a neverending symphony of lawnmowers & leafblowers. If there was a window, at least we could get it all out of the way at once and have a peaceful dinnertime once in a while.

Sure it sucks for the noise to start early... but I would feel bad for them if they didn't get started until the sun was already blazing. They work in the elements.... although I do like my sleep.... 7am is pretty common around here for construction, in the suburbs they might hold off until 8.

please someone help me!!! Every evening helicopters seem to swarm in the night sky for at least an hour. It happens almost daily. These helicopters are not looking for criminals - there's no flood light on. The sound is so horrible it drives me crazy. Is there any way I can get the LAPD do do their damn patrols somewhere else. I live in Harvard Heights, so I can see there needing to be some patrol every once in a while, but the volume and frequency of these damn ghetto birds is driving me ape sh*t.

At least construction will eventually have an end date. I can tolerate early construction noise for some weeks or months. What I can't stand is regular noise. The building across the street has gardeners blow leaves at 8am every Monday. As if Monday mornings aren't bad enough. I'm even usually up by then, but I can't stand having to endure that racket while I'm trying to wake up and get ready.

Those things should be banned, full stop. They're not good for the operator, throwing off fumes, scaring up particulates (which the operator inhales), and damaging hearing, and they're actually not all that more efficient than a wide rake.

The law in this part of Canada is M-Sa 7-9 and Su 9-9. A very unpopular neighbor used a deafening planer 12-14 hours a day, every day, for three months solid. I spent most of last summer at the park or pool trying to avoid a nervous breakdown. Legally there was nothing we could do about him. He is a crazy person, so no one was able to reason with him. I bet his floors, deck, siding, rulers and wood panelling are really smooth though.

my jackass former landlord had roofers above my bedroom re-shingling every weekend (friday, saturday, and sunday) from 6am until 7 or 8 am for a WHOLE SUMMER. the little duplex wasn't all that big... so i don't understand how the damn project took 3 and half months.

moreover, he never told us that any work would be done on the roof. i woke up that first morning to my windows covered by the blue tarp hanging from the roof and god awful noise.

If you are going to complain about noise "too early" in the morning maybe you shouldn't be so lazy and do your own dirty work instead of underpaying someone else to do it!

...quercus- it is easy for you to say use a rake sitting up in your ivory tower but when your livelyhood depends on finishing 10 houses in one day when and you are not faily compensated as it is, it is a different story. Too many people on this website including the bloggers themselves sound like rich spoiled brats!