Desperately need advice about apartment noise issue.

[Heiwos]

There seems to be a general feeling here that the chair wouldn't be irritating to a reasonable person downstairs, or, if it is, tough luck for them, that's apartment life. Neither follows the golden rule. Lowski can't know for sure what the chair noise is like unless he spends some time in the below apt.

I used to live in an apt. where the downstairs neighbors, two elderly ladies, were always pissed at the noise my roommate & I made. We claimed we used the apt. normally. From their perspective, we stomped everywhere. Soon after we moved out, everyone else was temporarily relocated while the owner replaced the floors (not just the flooring), because the builder had goofed something about the cement between floors, and it had turned to dust.

If the downstairs neighbor is truly logical like the apt. manager says, then she may not mind if Lowski spends a few minutes down there while the chair is running. He may be surprised. Alternatively, I like deuterdu's suggestion of trying to agree on set times for the chair to run.

[Morwyn_7]

What is so difficult in asking them what time they leave for work and come home?

Once you have that established you can use this chair of yours accordingly.

[Lowski]

Wow!

So we took a chance and asked them if we could have a talk with them. We informed them of the recent measures that we took, (now 6 layers of material). And we also tried to clear up any misunderstandings. I informed them of my pain issues and they seemed sympathetic. They just asked if we could avoid using a particular massage mode that was noisier than the others.

I then went upstairs to operate the chair while my wife and the neighbors listened for noise. We wanted to see if the new layers of wood and foam helped quiet the vibrations. I made sure to reenact my usual massage scenario. I turned on our Honeywell air cleaner (thinking maybe the white noise might help dampen the sounds), then I turned on the TV.

My wife and I were communicating by cell phone this whole time, and I informed her of all my actions. They started commenting that they could here the dreaded noise before I even turned the massage chair on! It took us a minute to realize that the vibration/noise might be caused by the air cleaner!

They reported that they could only pick up or sense the noise in certain areas of their apartment. This sounded odd to me. As far as I know, it is near impossible for people to be able to pinpoint the source of low frequency noise. We then turned off the air cleaner to see if that was the source. It was!

I then operated the chair with the air cleaner off. They could barely hear the chair. It turns out that the air cleaner was vibrating at a frequency that resonated through the building. They were hearing this low frequency vibration, and they were feeling strange symptoms like nausea, and loss of balance. It was affecting their inner ear I believe. They had never told us this before. Had they, I might have made the connection. I knew that the air cleaner produced an odd vibration, but it never bothered me.

This is so interesting! It changes everything. My wife deserves all the credit for wanting to make a good faith effort to talk with them. I was angry and didn't want to. We discussed it and were able to better understand each others position.

[Heiwos]

Great update. Nice mystery solved.

[Werewolf Tiger]

Idiots

[gardenine00]

In round 5, Lowski suddenly remembered his hobby of jackhammer repair...

[LucaBella]

ROTFL Garden!

[70Ford]

Reps to you, and your wife is a keeper!

[lowboz]

I had this problem and discovered Lowboz. There is no better solution. They're very cute and they work very well. Good luck!! Lowboz.com