Whatever happened to the noise abatement act?

I KNOW it's summer,I KNOW everyone is outside having fun! Actually the tourists aren't the problem..It's the wretched services..Maybe it's me?but has anyone else noticed how b****y noisy all the garden equipment is these days.?We no longer use our gardeners because quite frankly-they don't garden!.What they do is TRIM and BLOW. They use industrial size hellishly noisy machines to reduce shrubs,hedges and even some trees into bald submission.Ditto for the very few lawns we have around us. They don't coordinate this activity either, they do it on every single day of the week bar sunday,and at every concievable time from 7.30 am onwards.I know I sound like a GOW,but at least I know it will magically stop at the end of the season.The poor tourists have PAID for this awful intrusion.
This area is known as the Areio do Sonho..Place of dreams...hardly!!!

Anyone else as fed up as I am over this ever increasing mechanical intrusion?: any ideas on the subject ?unsure:

Better than ruining peacefull sinday mornings which is the traditional time for such work in the UK.

Ah EMR i was lucky to grow up there in the time of the gentle hand mower.Even the flymo wasn't too bad .Moved to NL by the time of the big petrol engines.They also respect Sundaya. to the point where they have only just introduced sunday shopping on the first sunday in the month. Civilised
I just don't remember this excessive noise in NL ,(and I am not that picky), but then they would be very likely to co-ordinate such work.
When DID gardeners decide that maintenance in a clients garden mean't doing the equivalent of making 'Ice Sculptures' out of all the shrubs and trees and hedges? It's turned a peaceful ,pleasant job into one that any fool with a chain saw can do.As a keen gardener I also know it encourages all those shrubs and hedges to grow twice a s fast.hmm maybe thats the point.Get more money out of the client.

Well I can certainly sympathise GeniB. I'm currently blocking my ears against the daily assault of

2 petrol strimmers cleaning 13,000 sq mtrs of land (past 4 days and ongoing)

2 neighbours chainsawing treetrunks for winter firewood (buying it ready-cut being an affront to manliness in these parts)

My nearest neighbour (we might as well be terraced with this one) jetwashing. Fine - except that he's an obsessive / compulsive so this has occupied him full time for the past 3 days and no signs of a let-up. And his property is a pocket-handkerchief entirely covered by concrete.

The re-arrangement of the entire landscape for the enlargement of a nearby industrial estate - I can clearly hear every time a heavy machine goes into reverse, let alone the rumbles and bangs of earth and rubble being tipped and bulldozed or the piledrivers engaged in constructing the new units. This is a noise we are now familiar with after 10 years of the same, on and off.

The noise of the factories that are up and running on said estate. They provide a sporadic background noise which frequently disturbs nights, weekends and bank holidays because apparently even though they employ very few locals they do have the capability to run entire factories with barely no human intervention, thanks to the wonders of modern technology (aka productivity gains).

All wonderful for the economy, no doubt. I can almost hear that flood of coins trickling down from rich to poor and alleviating poverty. But not as clearly as I can hear all the BLOODY NOISE

It's pretty bad around here too; a lot of machinery noise due to the new irrigation network going in.
I'm hoping that once it's operational, many of the small and medium pumps that run now will stop.

There's a deep hum almost all the time. I think it's big electric irrigation pumps up the road from here.

Then there's that damn estrangero with the big tractor that has massive mowing and hedge-cutting attachments. As well as a metal workshop, 5hp pressure washer, wood cutting machinery, chainsaw, strimmer...
Be thankful you don't have him as a neighbor.

Oh dear..............this is really terrible news. Just horrible to have noise spoiling the peaceful harmony of your own homes!!!!
I HATE machine sounds pushed into my home, it's one of my personal BIG pet-peeves in life on level with pedophilia! In our apartment the city trash trucks come at 04h30-05h00 with HUGE gnashing, dumping metal-to-metal noise, unbelievably loud. Once awake, there I am, awake for the day. I lived in Bavaria for many years and I LOVED, really, really LOVED the laws that enforced 'quiet' on Sundays.... and no shops open after 13h00 on Saturday until Monday. You can't even wash your car on Sundays; you can do nothing that disturbs the tranquility of the community at large in anyway.


So out of deep and abiding respect for you, my fellow expats, I will say NOTHING about waking up to the rhythmic Atlantic surf on the other side of the Rio Formosa. Yes, the diesel motors of the fishing boats intrud now and them but for me it's not a bad sound. But I do pay for the cost of this peace 'n quiet with throbbing dirty winds all night (starting like clockwork every night at 22h15), making the awning attached to the caravan, SLAP and crackle the whole night and covering everything with a layer of sticky red dust, including my skin...sigh. But after a quick campsite soapy wipe down, it's a relaxing milky cuppa and the sound of the surf, some roosters, gulls and our little screechy owl who (with his wife) each day moves closer and closer to where we sit outside.... kinda cool.
Funny Liveaboard...I love your machine it's SOOOOO SEXY and YOU made it which makes even more attractive. Yes, yes I admit mepat and I actually sat and watched the entire video you posted. Well that says it all doesn't it? ..... early-elderly retired couple, sitting in padded lawn chairs, by the sea, drinking and watching videos online of home-made farm equipment for a past-time. Actually it says too damn much doesn't it?

OHMYGOD Red ! My woes pale into nothing besides yours..That all sounds horrendous.

I do accept that jobs have to be done.Certainly grateful that the new roads and roundabouts are almost finished around us.The building site at the top of our hill only irritates when they tile cut ,and maybe if they oiled the crane it wouldn't make me want to bite on a rolled towel!! So it must be something to do with decibels and proximity that makes me want to throttle the gardeners.Plus maybe a bit of knowledge..They don't need to do half the stuff they are doing..
You sound pretty 'Rural' Liveaboard so heavy farm machinery would pass in your landscape.I wouldn't choose to live there,as I am sure you wouldn't choose to live in my suburban area.Horses for courses and all that. (I did DO rural in NL..Geen Kip op Straat' as they used to say..bored me to death.I used to long for the farmer to pass with a tractor for something to look at lol) I guess I am talking (moaning) about being assaulted by sudden noise of the unnecessary sort. We also have a neighbour who can't bear for there to be nothing going on at his house..Bought it two yrs ago and I don't think there has been a clear month when there haven't been workmen there banging seven bells out of it.Put hideous huge solar panels on the roof last week,now the view of the ocean is blocked in that direction.(as an aside...someone asked on another forum 'why if you had to have planning permission to build a sandcastle these days..does there seem to be none involved with banging up huge solar panels everywhere'?) Used to be a rather nice modern ranch style house..now it looks like something out of Doonray.
I think I will take my drink outside and look at the ocean..Oh dear another B****y machine has just started up,sounds like they are cutting down a tree!! All the tourists next door have just upped and traipsed inside..Oh joy...I hope they complain cos the guy is actually lopping a tree next to their pool...wrong time of year

Solar panels are encouraged, don,t new propertie with suitable space have to have them or the facility to jnstall them. Clearing land cutting trees down could be done either to conform with reducing fire risk or using this a a cover.
Few years ago lagoa council around us bought in Jcb,s and trucks to do just that in the middle of summer.
Woe betide anyone who had washing out or hoping gor a few peacefull hours by the pool.
This was done at the request of locals concerned at risk to their properties.
We have also had pines cut down to discourage the processionary moth and palms killed off by the weevil.
Never a dull moment.

Noise issue round where I am is dogs. Seems the locals love to keep big dogs in the garden, normally caged or behind the fence. Dogs seem not to be domesticated in any way, judging by the fact they seem to just cr4p where they like.

Luckily neither of my close neighbours have such a dog, but the guys down the end of the road do, everytime someone or something goes past, it sets them and their dog off, which then sets the dog opposite off and so on.

At night if I sit in the garden, I can hear distance constant barking of about 100 dogs. I pity the poor guys who live next to such dogs.

I understand security and so on, but our neighbourhood is pretty safe, and I would have thought the constant barking all night wouldn't be a price anyone except perhaps a deaf person would pay for bit of extra security. Besides the fact that it's possible to train a dog to provide security without the constant uncontrolled barking incessantly. My old landlord at a student place had a big rottweiller that went nuts at anyone it didn't know, but was docile and quiet once you'd been introduced to him. Maybe these people are unaware you can train dogs?

You are living in Portugal, our Portuguese neighbour believes that her countrymen are born with a genetic fault that does not permit them to hear the frequency of barking dogs.
We have found that regular dog treats has stopped the dogs near us barking when we walk by.

Dogs for me this week, I have a bitch in heat and there is a pack of dogs surrounding my house day and night! Twice already there has been 2 dogs managed to jump of a 2 metre wall into our dog kennel, they'll do anything to get their dirty way! The howling and fighting they are doing during the night has already had me up several times to get the garden hose out to get them away!

Reminds me of when my dog was in heat (one and ONLY time thank you,before spaying) We lived in a Dutch house with stable type font door.I opened the top half on several mornings to find an enormous St Bernard parked in the drive.After the third such encounter I got so fed up with this immovable object that I fetched a full bucket of water and threw it over him.He never moved a muscle but sat there forlornly ,dripping wet and now unable to see because his fringe hung down over his eyes.I laughed so hard I nearly ..well you know what... Then I bought missy inside a pair of those doggy repellent pants..they worked..

Our pet noise hate is dogs. We have a fab neighbour who will do anything for us. Provides so much veg and fruit and leaves it in our courtyard that we never have to buy a thing from the greengrocers dept. at the supermarket and is so helpful in every way, BUT he has two very noisy dogs who bark all night at the slightest provocation. They live about one hundred yards away from us and it is impossible to sleep at night with the window open in the bedroom. We have two dogs ourselves. A very laidback wolfhound lurcher and a blond bimbo rescue podengo who we have managed to retrain not to bark very much.(certainly not at night as they both sleep in our bedroom) But how do you approach the the problem of neighbours dogs when those neighbours are such fantastic people in every other way apart from the wretchedly noisy dogs. They don't seem to hear them. Is it a Portuguese thing with selected hearing or are we Brits just too sensitive for our own good?

I think that the Portuguese to dogs barking is similar to that of their driving habits.
This is how we do things!.

oh Lord! No hope of a reprieve then. Me thinks earplugs and a good glug of vino at bedtime might be a necessity then. Good neighbours are too good to offend.