The property next to ours is being logged. They’ve been running their equipment starting at 6:00 am, but until today, they’ve been starting far away from our house (and from others on the road) and working down closer to the homes later in the day. However, we’ve entered the log-processing phase, where they’re tossing trees around, cutting them, and chipping the brush with an ENORMOUS chipper, and still starting at 6:00. Actually 5:48 this morning they started the engines up.
This does not do the noise level justice - and by the way you can see the screen of our front door, this was taken from inside the house - an average level of 90 decibels:
This is going on 150' from my house. It’s only 200' to the mouth of the chipper. I tried yesterday to ask them to start at 6:30 but of course that went nowhere. I called the landowner from inside my front door this morning at 7:00 and I had to raise my voice to be heard over the noise. I was polite, but tried to convey the message that we are seriously unhappy. I’m sure there’s nothing they can do, but I just wanted them to know “Hey welcome to the neighborhood, you woke up my kids and are generally making our lives miserable, thanks.”
And yes, the town does have a noise ordinance, prohibiting such activity between the hours of... 10pm and 6am. So they’re legally fine.
They also helpfully pointed out to me that they were even closer to a house at their last job. “Oh, but did the land belong to the homeowner?” “Yes.” Well that’s a little different, don’t you think? They also did not have to put the landing right where it is. There’s a huge field on the other side of the property that could have been used, instead of clearing an acre of forest right there next to our house to do the collecting and processing.
I will say, It is objectively entertaining watching logs get tossed around like toothpicks by this equipment. The sawblade on the log processing machine is like 4' in diameter and cuts through 12" oaks like a sharp knife through celery. Impressive, and cool to watch. Just... ugh. Hopefully this only lasts a couple weeks, as they claim. The longer hours they work, the sooner they’ll be done!
I’d love if they offered me a few of those logs for free, for firewood, you know, as a nice gesture “sorry for making a shit ton of noise have some free firewood.” But I’m sure they won’t, now that I made my displeasure known. Hey, maybe the landowner will think of that? Probably not.