Maximizing Air Conditioner Noise Nuisance For Your Neighbours – A Guide
Subtitle: Weaponizing Your AC Unit In Tight Neighbourhoods
This article teaches you how to install AND use an air conditioner with MAXIMUM negative impact on your neighbour, how to play bylaw officers and police – and how to victimize yourself along the way. Author Jürgen Kraus has had experience in this field since 2006. He has worked as consultant and insultant alike.
| TL;DR: How to optimize the nuisance for your neighbours… 1. Choose the loudest unit with the biggest heft, preferably one that blows sideways towards your neighbours’ house. Do NOT use a compressor blanket to muffle the compressor noise. If you hit a semi-detached dwelling (=single frame), you annoy the maximum number of neighbours. 2. Place the unit in the middle of a narrow side yard, close to the property line and the neighbours’ windows, and firmly on the ground (NOT mounted on brackets). This will trap and amplify the noise and entertain the people in both back and front yards. It will cause vibrations in the walls AND in the ground causing a low-frequency drone all over the neigbours’ house(s), even in the basement(s). 3. Never take control of your equipment! Set your thermostat to Auto so that your air conditioner competes with your furnace all summer (yes, keep your furnace running all year round). Strictly avoid natural heat mitigation (blinds etc.), don’t follow the weather forecast. This will not only maximize equipment runtime, it will also create your own microclimate decoupled from the outside…and cause nightly air conditioner noise that keeps your neighbours from sleeping. Note: only the right combination of equipment, placement, and unpredictable, yet maximized runtimes (especially at night) can have the maximum nagging effect on your neighbours’ nerves. Eventually, this will give you the privilege to call the police on them and produce yourselves as victims. |
Introduction
Do you live in a tight neighbourhood but feel it is the same as an acreage? Did you always get what you wanted when you whined to your parents as a child, feeling like the centre of the world now? Do you not care about good relationships with your neighbours? Do you think life is all about eating, drinking, sex, and revenge? If most of the above is true, you might be interested in this article that teaches you how to elbow your way through the neighbourhood.
One of the most effective ways of imposing yourself on your neighbours is through constant noise to be projected inside and outside their house. A real bonus is keeping them from sleeping at night…a triumph climaxing when you can call the police telling them you feel threatened by them. All you need is…no, not love, but an air conditioner…and a bit of dark fantasy.
There are three components to your game:
- Select the right air conditioner
- Place the unit optimally
- Maximize runtime (this also involves your furnace)
Choosing Your Air Conditioner
Choose the smallest and cheapest model available as it runs less efficiently and therefore higher revving, louder, and longer than a larger unit. Select a suitcase shape that blows sideways over the property line. Do NOT use a sound blanket to muffle compressor noise! Saves money after all.
Optimizing Your Air Conditioner’s Installation Location
Ideally, you want your neighbours to be bothered by noise in as many places inside and outside their house as possible. This is best achieved by placing the air conditioner in the middle of a narrow side yard, as close to the property line as possible. The unit must sit firmly on the ground, not raised on brackets. A bonus is its proximity to a neighbours’ window. Another bonus is a large number of windows in your neighbours’ side-yard facing wall.
When running, the air conditioner produces a low-frequency compressor noise, a higher frequency fan noise, and a swishing sound from the moving air. These sound waves hit the neighbours’ wall, which absorb some energy and reflect some. This process is infinitely repeated (called “reverberation” ) and amplifies the noise, making it louder. Additionally, the air conditioner causes vibrations in the ground, a principle used in geophysical exploration as “vibroseis”.
This has the following effects on the outside: the trapped, amplified noise shoots out on both ends of the side yard, causing nuisance for people sitting on the back patio or working in the front of the house. Well done!
Inside the neighbor’s house, a low-frequency drone sound is produced by the walls’ own vibrations. This sound can be heard throughout the house, and the ground vibrations also affect the basement. If the air conditioner hits a semi-attached dwelling, the other half is equally affected as the vibrations travel along the walls (a semi-attached dwelling is one frame).
Maximizing Air Conditioner Runtime
We’ve already discussed the qualitative nuisance caused by your neighbours’ air conditioners. Now, let’s talk about quantity (in terms of time). More is better. Between May and October, you could disturb your neighbours with hundreds of noise hours, far more than necessary due to the hot weather. As a bonus, you can keep them from sleeping. Sleep deprivation can make them angry, giving you a reason to call the police on them.
How to maximize air conditioner runtime? Easy. As a first step, avoid using natural heat mitigation methods like blinds during daytime and open windows on cool evenings. Instead, let compressors handle the job. Open windows only on hot days while your air conditioner is running…so that it does not stop at all.
The best way to maximize runtime is setting your thermostat to “Auto”. No need to take control over the machine, let the machine take control over you and your neighbours.
On the Auto setting, your air conditioner will cool your house down into the late evening. Then, with a bit of lag, your walls will have re-radiated some stored heat back, so that your unit will start again in the middle of the night. Your neighbours will just love it!
When the outside temperature drop further towards the wee morning hours, the furnace will jump in and heat the house up again….ready for the air conditioner to start up again at the first sunlight to remove this added heat. This will keep your natural gas provider happy.
Yes, you read correctly, in order to maximize air conditioner runtime, you have to run your furnace through the summer! It may sound silly, but it’s actually really effective in annoying your neighbours.
After a while, your indoor climate will be completely disconnected from the outdoor climate. Your AC and related furnace cycles will run daily until the first frost.
There’s one problem…that actually may let your neighbour frolic: no air conditioner should operate below 14°C…below, the coils will freeze up and the compressor will get damaged over time. If everything else fails, consult the manual.
Sound sample recorded with phone at my patio door (2023-10-01 @ 4°C). Neighbours’ AC not sounding right while running 10°C below its minimum operating temperature.
Victimizing Yourself – Playing Police and Bylaw Officers
Victimize yourself! Hitler blamed the Jews for the Holocaust, so why shouldn’t you follow this principle? First, get some cheap surveillance cameras from Costco and tell everybody you do not feel save anymore. Call the police and tell them you’re being stalked and threatened. You may come across as a vindictive time waster in the end, but at least the police probably want to keep you and your neighbours apart for safety reasons. Goal achieved.
Bylaw officers are even easier to handle as they are by default doing everything not having to enforce their community standards bylaw. They will tell your neighbours to move or they should imagine living along a railway line [these are actual examples]. After all, the cities are afraid of lawsuits by financially powerful companies, and not by individuals.
1. Air conditioner with horizontal exhaust sitting on the ground in a narrow side yard…which will cause the desired vibrations in the walls and below ground.
2. Now set the thermostat (to Auto for maximum runtime) and forget it…until the first frost. And your May to October will be bingo!
Concluding Remarks
This article describes a great example of how to pester your neighbours while victimizing yourself. It tells you how you can be the offender and still have police and bylaw on your side. The underlying cause is that rules are established by local politicians in the interest of industry groups — and these rules are further twisted in their interpretations by the executive forces against affected individuals.
But, is that really surprising in the Trumpian age of alternative facts…which may just be the Orwellian age repeated.
Why not take advantage of that? After all, the biggest enemy of mankind is the neighbour!
Until next time…keep on listening
