No relief from building noise

Boom times in Wanganui come at a price for some ? and one of those prices is noise.
Christodoulos Moisa said he and his partner had to leave their Durie Hill house at noon on Good Friday to escape construction noise from next door.
They left after five calls to Wanganui District Council's 24-hour noise control service and being told there was nothing its officers could do because that level of noise was permitted.
Mr Moisa said he was a teacher and his partner worked in Wellington, opposite a noisy construction site. By Easter weekend they were ready for some quiet.
"We had had a gutsful."
There were four houses being built at the front and to the side of his property, with much of the work on one of them being done on weekends and holidays, starting as early at 6.30am and going on until 7.30pm. There was also empty land and talk of further subdivision in the area. Noise from trucks driving and reversing, diggers, chainsaws, bulldozers and tradesmen's radios had all annoyed, and Mr Moisa said he had made many complaints.
He said he knew construction noise was a difficult matter, and he was not against progress, but suggested that residents should warn neighbours if they intended to do prolonged, noisy construction, and also that consultation and consent should be required for major projects and there should be stricter noise rules for weekends and public holidays.
Wanganui District Council regulatory services manager Bob Davies said Durie Hill was in a residential zone where noise between 7am and 6pm must not exceed 50dBA for more than 10 percent of the time, and 40 dBA during the night hours.
Someone standing next to a lawnmower would be getting noise of 60dBA to 70dBA. But construction noise did not have to comply with those rules, Mr Davies said. If it did, no construction would be possible because it was too noisy. This was obviously unreasonable.
Construction noise was therefore exempt from normal rules but had to comply with national standards. The ones used in Wanganui were a limit of 64dBA on the neighbour's doorstep between the hours of 6am and 10pm. The level was only slightly less for weekends and public holidays.
People assessing the noise also had to take into account whether those producing it were being reasonable and containing it as much as possible.
With increasing subdivision and development happening in the district, council environmental health officer Mike Sigley said a tightening of rules could be needed.