Well, it’s 11pm, and my upstairs neighbor has been at it for about a half an hour now. I’m beyond the rant stage; I’m looking for practical solutions.
I live under (what I assume to be) a large, large man. I’ve never seen him, but I do hear him from the time he comes home from work to the time he leaves in the morning. When he’s awake, he’s tromping throughout his apartment. But what has me going insane is his snoring. He goes to bed every night at 10:30, and snores until 6. and it is LOUD.
Imagine living under a professional wrestler roller-skating across a hardwood floor for 7-8 hours every night. That’s what it sounds like. It’s so bad that I’ve taken to sleeping in the living room, but I can STILL hear it. I leave my computer on so that the fan partially masks the noise, but it’s an imperfect solution.
What can I do? The apartment management is historically unsympathetic to anything less provoking than a Whitesnake concert or a meth lab in their buildings. I’m sure that the police would feel that being called for a snorer wouldn’t be an effective use of their time (I’d agree).
I thought about going passive-aggressive and signing him up for every piece of free sleep clinic and snoring literature I can find on the net, or perhaps a nice note on the door. I’m not keen to talking directly to him. “Hi, I’m the downstairs neighbor that hasn’t slept in a week because you have an extremely large and loud soft palette” doesn’t seem like a good conversation.
Any ideas? What have you done in similar situations? I really don’t want to go through the hassle of convincing the managers to let me move to a new apartment (and then actually MOVE all my stuff again) but if this keeps up, I may have to. There has to be a more reasonable solution.
Damn, if I didn’t live in a townhouse I’d walk downstairs and offer you my condolences. One of my roommates is a 300-lb, pacing, fidgetting, world-champion snorer. Who works late shifts.
If white noise doesn’t work (puter fans, radios, etc) you might try finding out how deep of a sleeper your neighbor is by applying the end of a broom handle vigorously to the ceiling. Or borrowing a CD of John Phillip Sousa’s greatest works. Or pounding on his door and asking to borrow the table saw he keeps using. Or learning to play the djembe (like I do). Or taping his snoring and playing it back during the day on your stereo with the volume at max.
Just a few suggestions.
Oh, and you might also try earplugs, though not everyone can stand sleeping with them in.
As a confirmed (and loud) snorer, I can give some advice on this.
Maybe the best and most effective thing to do is to look for pamphlets or booklets or public service flyers about sleep apnea, which is quite likely to be what’s causing Mr. Lumberjack’s nocturnal log-sawing imitation. Since it’s a very serious, little-known, often overlooked and easily treated (though not easily cured) condition, you can leave information about it and the possible treatments on his doorstep/mailbox/doorknob/welcome mat with the pretense (or sincere motive) of being an anonymous neighbor concerned for his health. Assuming he has a medical support structure (insurance or MA) and is, in fact, suffering from sleep apnea, a few sleep studies and the prescription of a C-PAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine for use during sleep should take care of the snoring almost immediately.
jayjay (who recently went three nights without his C-PAP machine…talk about living nightmares…)
When I was looking for my first apartment, I noticed that all the buildings around here specify that at least 75% of the apartment floor must be carpeted (some rent carpet, some included it automatically, some leave it up to the tenant). I was told that it was to muffle the noise so people wouldn’t disturb their downstairs neighbors. Much as I like hardwood floors, I must admit that it’s nice to have peace and quiet.
You said that your building has hardwood floors. Maybe you can suggest to the building management that they talk to your neighbor about carpeting.
I recently married an avid snorer. My solution is earplugs, the foam kind. It may not block all of the noise, but may be part of a solution in addition to having some sort of insulator between him and you, like carpet suggested above.
I second Ferguson’s comment. Earplugs have kept me from killing Spouse many times over. One caution: They don’t take the sound away completely, just muffle it way down. So if this guy’s snoring is shaking the walls, you might need to get the extra strength earplugs.
If you cannot stand the foam earplugs then try the silicon kind. You can find them at well-stocked drug stores. They mold to your ears better and you don’t get the “there’s something crawling down my ears canal” feeling in the middle of the night.
I second jayjay’s advice. Unless someone lives with him, he may not even realize he is such a loud snorer. Plus, if he has sleep apnea chances are he is not feeling very well rested. Correct me if I am wrong, jayjay, but I believe people with sleep apnea actually stop breathing for an instant when snoring, partialy wake up and then repeat that cycle over and over until morning. You’d be doing both yourself and your neighbor a favor by pointing him in the right direction for help.
Well, an update. I printed out some information from http://www.entnet.org/snoring.html and placed it at his door last night. We’ll see what happens. I did use earplugs for a time, but that didn’t keep me from feeling him snoring.
BTW, our apartments are carpeted, it just sounds like he’s rollerskating on hardwood floors.
Maybe I’ll just move my bedroom stuff in the living room, and put the living room stuff in the bedroom.
tevya, you are correct. When I was sleeptested, I had over 140 “mini-wakeups” due to apnea (a-pnea = “no breath”) in 3 hours (180 minutes). Sleep apnea can, besides the danger of not being able to start breathing again, cause heart damage and hypertension due to the stress of repeatedly being alarmed from sleep to jumpstart your breathing, as well as the medical problems that sleep deprivation causes. When they connected me to the C-PAP machine on that same sleep-test, I almost immediately went into REM sleep and stayed there for the rest of the night…I had to make up quite a bit of REM sleep.
