I agree, we took it as a lesson going forward. Especially since as management in these areas seem to have high turn overs and care much less than our primary apartment management in ATL (who worked there for like 9 years, crazy!) .

OP can obviously do more and probably argue for other hours. I'm just trying to provide them a reasonable way forward. We just picked and chose our battles cause we were going to move apartments anyways.

This seems obvious now to people accustom to these bigger apartment buildings, but we'd just moved from ATL where gated apartments were much more common and the trash compactor was by the exit of the community so it never crossed our minds!

Well, our apartment was also street level so the sound of cars and such driving by in the morning could have woken us up just as much as this. Plus, I'm a heavy sleeper so I slept through it, but not my fiancée, but we also got up for work around then anyways it didn't bother me. Plus weekend quiet hours were later.

It runs when it's full, so for a large amount of time we were at the apartment (like 6 -8 months in since it was peak pandemic) , it was only running at night sporadically, so much less noticeable, and by the end when it did start to be more noticeable, we just picked our battles since we intended to move apartment anyways (was just waiting for the one we wanted to open up).

Oh we don't live there now. This was like 2 years ago, but I thought the situation applied and it was a similar tactic we took when people started dropping weights at the gym above our apartment.

That's also assuming they're sympathetic enough to do so or that there's a similar apartment in your price range available. They did not give a fuck though (lol) and it was during height of the pandemic.

Hi! So we dealt with this exact situation (but in Rockville) where the trash compactor was right above our apartment and obviously something we did not know when we toured.

Here is what we did: Look up quiet hour laws in your location, say that that you cannot sleep or it keeps waking you up, and it is ultimately affecting your sleep and health. Better if you can record the sound (like in a voice notes)/ note how often it goes off/ or best have management stand in your building to hear the noise.

Email management regarding that. They will probably ignore you so you start emailing EVERYONE you possibly could. See if you can find corporate numbers or whoever owns the apartment and cite that law and the above about your sleep and health. Better yet if you can call them. I cannot recall now if we reached someone by phone or email - but I think we annoyed someone (I don't think they liked our 1am voicemails) enough that they made the building management do something.

The best we could compromise with the apartment was that they would put it on a timer so that it did not run between the quiet hours (for us it was 11-7am). And then also get a number or POC you can call when it gets stuck or the timing gets off.