OT Driveways - Noise pollution - rant

[dave]

This guy a few doors from us is have his driveway "paved" (is in flood plain - but that's another matter). The thing is the chaps doing this work have been at it for 7 WEEKS now! The noise of that brick-cutting-noise-from-hell machine every day (except w/ends) is truly dreadful. No point in asking politely if anything can be done to reduce it - like use shields on the machine - maybe - he's not the co-operative sort. The thing is that terrible noise is distubing not only us but must be a few hundred (majority elderly) people around here. I can hear the noise easily 300 yards away and that's a big radius. I don't think noise pollution is treated as a "real" pollution anyway and, from just observation I must agree many people don't seem bothered by it - but otoh many are. Imho, cutting that many bricks for that length of time should mean either noise blocking screens or they take the damn things away to some factory and cut them there. Costly yes - but why should we have to put up with this noise for so long! Thanks for reading

[Rod]

Odd. That is a devil of a long time.

Also, paving expert recommends splitters:

Type of Paving Concrete Block Pavers

Hand Tools - Ok, but splitters are faster

Power Saws - Fast, neat cuts, but a lot of dust is generated. Dust MUST be suppressed

Splitters - Simple, fast, accurate and fairly clean preferred option

We seem to be suffering a severe excess of helicopter noise - day and night - at the moment. Not sure why. But it is horrible.

[Andy Hall]

That is possibly true for blocks. It isn't for clay pavers, be they machine made or handmade like ours. For these, a d diamond cutter is required to make a decent job. Having said that, even if the drive is a funny shape, there shouldn't need to be that much cutting unless a very unusual pattern is being created.

[Rod]

Absolutely, Andy. But - rightly or wrongly - I assumed that the noise wasn't wet diamond wheel cutting. So I might well have fallen into the trap of assuming concrete block pavers.

[Andy Hall]

I can't think what else it could be. The only other machine generally used is a plate vibrator and that doesn't take all that long to complete the job.

[Rod]

I thought some sort of (dry) power saw - or even an angle grinder.

[Andy Hall]

A large diamond cutter would be audible at 270m away, but I'm at a loss why it would need to be used for as long as 7 weeks, unless it's for very short periods each day.

[Steve Walker]

Look on the bright side, it must be costing him a fortune.

[John Rumm]

My first large scale deployment of machine made concrete blocks was on

80 odd square meters of garden paths with lots of curved edges and round beds etc. I alas found out rather too late that the block splitter did not work that well even on those. It may have just been luck of the draw with the one I hired, but, four times out of five, it tended to cleave them rather than snapping them cleanly. The results were edges not clean enough to use. So I had to cut in all the edges (600 blocks or so) with an angle grinder. Having said that it only took about two and a half days to do the lot.

[RobertL]

Perhaps he's cutting blocks for lots of otherr driveway jobs elsewhere. he avoids complaints by using his own driveway work as a 'cover'.

Robert