Neighbors & Loud Appliances: Reasonable Hour for Use?

About three times a week, I like to start each morning with a fruit smoothie for breakfast. It’s a perfect way to start off the day: a balanced concoction of farmer’s market fruits and muscle fortifying protein powder that’s easy to gulp down and sure to fuel me through the morning hours. Perfect, except for the inordinate amount of noise made in the process upon pressing “ON”, thanks to the mechanical cacophony of the blender’s hellish mechanism. Because of this, I try to wait till 9am on weekdays and 10am on weekends before even considering turning on the death metal blender…

We’ve had neighbors who would regularly vacuum at 7-8am. While we applaud their fastidious dedication to housekeeping, we’ve always believed the vacuum shouldn’t be turned on in a multi-unit apartment till 9am at the earliest (unless you know your nearby neighbors are away or early risers), since loud appliances can echo into nearby units or reverberate through walls (as noted by a reader’s comment yesterday). At least any of these aren’t as bad as a previous neighbor who would leave their lights and television on blast everyday for their dog, as we’ll take the intruding sounds of a loud vacuum over the audio of daytime television.

Usually, just kindly asking a neighbor to run loud appliances at more reasonable hours will work in reaching a compromise. But then again, everyone has a different definition of “reasonable hour”. What’s your take and have you found a good way to reach out to neighbors about loud appliance use?