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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> Telling other people what they can do with their property is fundamentally reprehensible.

One man's freedom ends where another man's freedom begins. Fine if you're doing small scale car repairs on your own car in a residential zone, not fine if the smell from your hacky welding job disrupts my enjoyment of my property.

If you want to do shit that impacts your neighbors, go and rent a garage in an industrial or commercial zone.

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Or, you can just talk to your neighbors about it ahead of time and come to some agreement. I know this relies on having sane, reasonable neighbors which is not a given.

I built a single engine airplane in my suburban garage over the course of six years, and it involved lots of specialized (and loud) tools. Air compressors, rivet guns and other pneumatic tools. Before starting, I visited both neighbors and gave them a heads up to see if they had any problems with it. We agreed on night and weekend curfews for the air compressor and tools and that was that.

I swear, 90% of our laws we wouldn't even need if people weren't total assholes.

When I moved into a denser neighborhood I traded out my small noisy air compressor for an old large one that operates very slowly. You can't even tell it's running from outside my garage, let alone outside my property. Even standing right next to it you can engage in normal-voiced conversation and no ear protection is needed. Unfortunately such machines no longer seem to be available new.

If one of your neighbors had said had just said no would you have just not done it? If you did it anyway based on when you thought it was reasonable to make noise until who would of been the assholes them or you?

I would have absolutely taken steps to address whatever their concerns were, including insulating/soundproofing my garage.

Whoa! Do you have a build log posted somewhere? What platform did you build on?

I think I just discovered a dangerous new rabbit hole…

E-mail is in my profile.

When I was growing up in the 80's we had a neighbor that built a plane in his garage. It was fascinating to watch it develop over the years and it really taught me a lesson about persistence.

I really wish I had a time lapse of that build.

There is a point where this is reasonable (no one has a right to let dead animals rot on their residential property), but it's also possible your sensitive nose is ruining your neighbor's ability to enjoy his property.

You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.

> sensitive nose

Last time I checked, fuel and many other fluids in cars are carcinogens or otherwise toxic. Leave that shit out of any place that isn't adequately equipped to clean it up.

> You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.

Here in Germany, that is usually governed by city codes anyway, no need for an HOA - trash cans usually have to be in a separate room indoors (for large complexes) or in an enclosure (e.g. [1], the first grab off of Google). We don't need micromanaging HOAs (and don't have them outside of condo complexes), because decades upon decades of experience have led to a democratically agreed set of basic rules - in this case: society has democratically decided that they don't want trash bins standing around in the open, partially because that's a fucking eyesore, partially because free-standing bins just attract vermin and pests.

[1] https://www.vidaxl.de/e/vidaxl-mulltonnenbox-fur-3-tonnen-20...

Your own choice of example was the smell from welding. With regard to releasing toxic or environmentally damaging chemicals, you are on much more solid ground.

For what it's worth, it would be better if people knew how to weld and how to prepare a workpiece for welding. Back when I worked on cars myself at a local hobby garage (common here in Germany, sort of the car equivalent of a makerspace), the amount of people who didn't strip off plastic attachments or removed paint was so excessive that my favourite shop imposed a rule "idiots setting stuff on fire or causing excessive smoking while welding have to bring in a crate of beer".

I definitely would not want to live next to someone learning how to use a welding rig.

> Last time I checked, fuel and many other fluids in cars are carcinogens or otherwise toxic.

Judging by the sheer number of Prop 65 warnings slapped on everything in California, that's hardly unique to automobiles.

Besides, it's already illegal to dump such fluids. Enforce the existing reasonable laws instead of introducing new unreasonable ones.

Welding smells a lot less than someone smoking a cigarette, so I doubt people would complain about that.

However, the noise of someone preparing stuff to weld with an angle grinder would definitely be annoying.

Unfortunately for anyone making a fuss about this, most suburbs tolerate the scourge of gas powered leaf-blowers every weekend, starting at an ungodly hour, and they're often louder than an angle grinder.

Edit: my point is just that it's weird to police car maintenance specifically, rather than general noise ordinances and/or HOA rules (for people who choose to have an HOA).

I wish people took noise pollution more seriously.

The same people complaining about car/mechanical work are the ones who have no problem with consistent leaf blowers/lawn mowers/parties/etc.

Depends on the welding, stick welding gives off plumes of smoke and vapors. Tig welding is the opposite and very clean.

Do you know of any examples of jurisdictions that recognize a property owner's right to protection from neighboring property owners' smells?

I've heard several anecdotes about people whose neighbors picked up a hobby that generated downwind impact, but the only times I've heard of the neighbor being made to stop were in cases where an HOA existed.

I'm German, we have a ton of court cases dealing with smell emissions (mostly, grills and heavy smokers), and these almost always end up with the emitter losing because they impact their neighbors in an amount that courts see as unreasonable. Basically, "don't be an arsehole" in legalese.

Interesting. It's worth pointing out that in general (though I'm still curious if there are examples here), the legal landscape in the US is weighted heavily in the other direction. One of the examples I'm directly familiar with was a friend who ended up moving because their neighbor picked up meat smoking as a hobby, and the wind was carrying nearly 24/7 smoke downwind into my friend's house.

> and the wind was carrying nearly 24/7 smoke downwind into my friend's house

At that point, he'd probably get a C&D order filed against him for emissions and a decent fine on top as well.

That's why I love the German system: people are protected from the influence of bad actors, not the other way around.

smoking meats makes you a 'bad actor'?

As soon as a neighbor is impacted so massively they are forced to move away, yes it absolutely makes you a bad actor.

FFS, if you plan on taking up a hobby that causes pollution, do at least the bare minimum and check out with your neighbors first and install appropriate mitigation measures (filters and scrubbers). Or, if you want to be a really good person, offer your neighbors some pieces of meat in exchange for tolerating the emissions.

>As soon as a neighbor is impacted so massively they are forced to move away, yes it absolutely makes you a bad actor.

Civic engagement with the goal of infringing upon your neighbors' right to use their property in whatever manner they see fit frequently meets these criteria. You are the bad actor.

Furthermore, policy informed by sentiments like yours have been tried and failed. Strict separation of commercial and residential activity is why places like LA and SF are the sprawled suburban wastelands they are today. You wanna live in the city? That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so. If you would prefer bugs, heat and the occasional devastating weather event every several decades move to Florida.

> Furthermore, policy informed by sentiments like yours have been tried and failed.

We have been running this kind of policy for decades in Germany, and the only ones complaining are people who don't care about their neighbors and society but only care for themselves and their enjoyment.

> That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so.

Surprise, I'm living right in the inner area of Munich. The only thing causing noise here is the street with an active 5-10 minute service bus line, and that's gotten better as the buses began to be switched over to hybrid and recently electric models. When we make a bbq event or a birthday party, it's customary here to ask the neighbors if it's OK, and to offer to come around for a beer and a steak. It's called "not being an arsehole on purpose", a concept that seems to be very foreign to Americans, at least on Reddit.

In the US, a lot of places have restrictions on raising livestock for example which can certainly have downwind impact, for example. My town is a Massachusetts right to farm town (as many are) though I don't know the exact details of the bylaws in my town.

this thread has lost the distinction between light industrial zoning, community aesthetics and personal behaviors. In the "USA" is not really useful because, due to history, these laws in one State can be very different than in another USA State; that property ownership is generally a County level authority; and City rules can be different again, by zoning.

There is no shortage of stupid, destructive behavior among humans, agree. However zoning is generally exactly to keep light industrial activity (poisons, smells, leaks) away from residential areas (children, people with illness, health). The personal Auto blurs that distinction and yes, is a source of poisons and bad aesthetics.. so there is work to do.

Two items -- people from Asian countries, or the Global South, or others, do have really different cultural aesthetics than Germans about houses and yards; secondly there is a different fundamental agreement in America about how to allocate rights and responsibility to land owners. Is it not true that most Germans do not own a home? Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?

> Is it not true that most Germans do not own a home?

Yes, only about 47% own the home they are living in [1] - partially due to a strong history of government-provided and cooperative-owned housing, partially because land values around suburban and urban areas have exploded so far that young people can't ever hope of owning anything.

> Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?

Good question. The Catholic Church is extremely intransparent, so serious estimates can't really be made [2]. The real estate market is extremely fractured - even the largest players Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia, with something like 550k homes, own just 2% of the market combined [3]. The Catholic Church has been estimated at about 130k units in the past [4], so they are while certainly a large player still not the largest, not even close.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Wohnen...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/katholische-kirch...

[3] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/vonovia-deu...

[4] https://www.domradio.de/artikel/zwischen-investment-und-sozi...

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