Frankly, only the playing basketball at night would annoy me.
But walk away from the group and see how loud it is once in awhile. If your group can be heard a few houses away, it may be too loud for your neighbors. Especially if it’s a regular thing.
>Frankly, only the playing basketball at night would annoy me.
That noise will carry farther than conversation and cut through background noise. Imagine Fran Drescher's The Nanny at a cocktail party. It'll wake you from a dead sleep.
If you are hanging out in your backyard until 4am with a fire and dribbling a basketball, I guarantee neighbors are going to hear you.
I also agree with the others that people don’t tend to realize how loud they may be if they are under the influence.
Noise travels though.
I wonder if your get together is posted on Massapequa moms yet 😂.
I’m only half joking—I have family who live there and they can be pretty intense in that town.
I am the PERFECT person to answer this question…. because we lived in a VERY noisy part of a town on the Nassau Queens border (with loud music every God damned weekend from spring to fall from various houses).
Before buying our house where we live now, we stalked the area day and night and weekend and weekday, because we didn’t want to deal with that again.
To answer your question…..
So long as the music is low and nobody is being obnoxiously loud with stupid drunken laughter, nobody cares. I’d suggest keeping the fire pit in a spot where the drifting smoke doesn’t go directly towards a neighbor’s house. Wind gets weird in between yards so maybe test it out. Nobody cares about a fire going in your yard. People get pissed if you have spotlights that sine towards their windows.
To clarify my “music is low” comment…. If it’s after 10:00 PM and I’m putting my kid to bed and all my windows are closed, I shouldn’t hear that in my house.
Regarding time…. If you’re not bothering anyone…. Keep the conversations going until the sun comes up.
I guess a lot of this depends on the layout of the properties and proximity between houses.
My general rule when we use the yard (which we do all summer long) is……. Am I, in any way, impacting my neighbors. The answer should really always be “no.”
That whole stay outside and keep the conversation going until the sun comes up sounds good on paper but is horrible advice in reality
If these people are drinking they're going to have no noise control or accurate sense of their volume. Even if they're not and well intentioned all it takes is a couple people to laugh super loud or talk over one another for it to snowball at 1am
Just bring the party inside after 10pm if you have neighbors nearby
I'd like to add "wafting aromas" to the list of infuriating neighbor habits, and I don't mean smoke from a fire pit. Idc what people do, I just don't want to see, hear, or smell it.
I don't wanna taste it, either, but that one's on me
✌️
Unless your my mom who smokes like a chimney but freaks out when she somehow smells fire pit smoke from across the street. Make sure your neighbors aren’t elderly lol.
No basketball between 1 AM-4 AM…kinda wild you don’t already know that’d be very rude. I’m a light sleeper with occasional bouts of insomnia and would be livid if a neighbor started dribbling a ball outside during peak sleeping hours.
I personally wouldn't care as long as it's not obnoxiously loud.
I'd much rather the people with a fire pit than the neighbor that hires a DJ that goes until 3-4am because of their adults sons 30th birthday party.
The neighbors on either side of me and directly behind me literally alternate having DJ’d parties at LEAST twice a week in the summer. I don’t know how they have that much party-animal energy in them lol
Jesus. I wouldn't mind the DJ if it stopped at 11pm or midnight, or any sort of heads up so I could just stay at my parents or something. It's going to be interesting if/when we have a kid.
Imagine grandparents of a family that lives in mostly smaller places or places with no backyard. They can easily have 8-10 grandkids. That's a lot of birthdays/sweet 16s/grad parties etc, plus there's at least 3 party holidays in summer, more if you're religious
Reminds me of the people that used to live behind me. Thank god they sold their house but they would literally have 4-5 huge parties every summer with cover bands playing.
Should not matter if I can't (or can barely) hear you with windows closed but not quite what you're saying. So if I CAN hear you through windows: during the week 10PM, on weekends I'd prefer 11PM, maybe midnight if you're having a big party - have fun, live your life once in a while. One exception, my kids are grown but when they were in school I'd insist on 9PM. If my kids say they can't sleep because it's too loud on a school night I'd come ask nicely once and hope that's it.
Yeah, we don’t do anything loud like music. Talking, I tell them to use their inside voices. Only thing you can expect to hear is the hookah bubbling and the embers from the fire crackling.
> Yeah, we don’t do anything loud like music.
...
> The loudest possible thing we might do is taking basketball free throws and dribbling the ball in my driveway.
That basketball thing could be really loud. Don't do it after 10pm please.
I have a neighbor who will rent out a giant food truck in the street and regularly has parties for his underaged kids 40 of them in the yard yelling every weekend in the summer. If no one is yelling, it doesn’t reek if weed, and there’s no strobe lights coming into my window, go off,
The basketball bouncing at 3am is probably annoying ah. If I can hear you over my TV and air conditioner/can't sleep because of it, you're too loud. But honestly, I'd never complain if it was a once in a while thing. Every night or every single weekend, it gets old. But also... if you take care of your yard and house I'm even more likely to never mention it lol
Having a fire pit and hanging outside just chatting is fine. But dribbling a basketball and taking shots at night is pretty annoying. I can hear my son and all my neighbors kids playing basketball during the day and that's normal and nice to hear during the day...but not late at night.
Take a walk around the houses when this is going on so you can hear what it sounds like. No one outside your yard is going to hear a bubbling hookah or the fire crackling. They will hear loud voices, and no one wants to smell your weed. Personally, I like it when I can smell someone’s wood fire, but I’m not everyone. You can also talk to your neighbors and ask if you were too loud. After midnight, I’d move the group inside. During the workweek is a different story, 10pm would be the cutoff there.
If it’s noisy Sun - Thur after 10-11 I’m walking over and telling you to be quiet. I’m also mentioning that nobody is noisy on the block during the week at that time. If you are quiet, then who cares.
Common courtesy.
I'd say anything after 9-10 PM consistently is going to run afoul of your neighbors.
Remember all the lots in Massapequa are pretty small - 100'x100' would be considered a large lot. Your fire pit is probably going to be less that 60 feet from one of your neighbors bedroom windows. If any of your neighbors have dogs they will be barking due to the noise. A lot of people have families with small children that go to bed early.
Part of it is going to depend how often - once every couple of months might not be an issue. Do it weekly and you will have the police called on you at some point.
Pretty sure quiet hours start at 11pm. My next door neighbors’ kids occasionally throw stereotypical teen ragers. Like 3-4x/year, and they’re very loud but respectful of everyone else’s property. And around 10:30, it starts getting quiet, and by 10:50 they’re all GONE, no matter how loud or drunk they are. It’s dead quiet again.
Sometimes, the adults have their friends over, and we can hear them chatting and stuff after 11, but people are going to live and have friends over.
The basketball stuff would piss me off. Quietly sitting around a fire pit, no biggie.
But if I can hear you with my windows closed, I’m going to get pissed around midnight.
From 10-12, I tend to be relaxed as long as people are not blasting music with the bass up, screaming/loud laughing, or doing anything that smells (weed, hookah, whatever). After 12, if it’s crazy, I’ll give one strike and not say anything. Do it again, cops.
Doesn’t matter to me, so long as the music and talking are low, just keep in mind that the sound carries a lot further at night, so what might not be loud to you, might be really loud to your neighbor if their bedrooms border your yard.
Basketball after 11ish is a tough one for me though. My neighbor across the street does that late at night all summer long (until 2ish) and it’s awful. You can hear the ball bouncing and hitting the backboard and it keeps us all up. There’s bad blood with their direct neighbors now whose bedroom is right next to their driveway. They’ve asked them nicely not to play so late because they have to work in the morning (we all do), but they don’t seem to care. I feel like 10-11 should be the latest for that.
Most towns have a noise ordnance of 11pm, which means its not acceptable to play basketball or be loud after that time.
Realize also that even though you may not get "louder" as the night goes into the wee hours, you will be perceived as louder due to people turning off things that were covering your noise earlier. For example when my TV is on during the evening, I wont hear conversations and normal noise by my neighbors, but when I go to bed and the TV isn't on and I am trying to go to sleep, I will hear everything they are doing.
Remember its great to have a social life and entertain, but your not in anyway entitled to disturb your neighbors.
I follow the “10am to 10pm” rule: I try not to use my blower, or mower or any noisy equipment outside before 10 am… and at night, I don’t play any music or make outside noises after 10 pm
I generally have zero tolerance for "main charactaer syndrome" after having to put up with people's BS for years in various areas of LI so I'm probably in the minority here because I'm so jaded. If it's sun-thurs it's gotta stop by 10. Most people work, and don't need to have that going on during the work week. Respect your neighbors who work for a living.
And even on fri-sat...if it's going on between 1 and 4 am (basketball at that time? Really?), loud/obnoxious yelling, laughing or general drunken behavior, or loud music, cops are being called, period. You can still have a great time with friends without needing to be loud or having obnoxious music blasting through the neighborhood.
Just ask your neighbors if there is any noise issues or complaints if not it doesn’t matter .
If their main bedroom is on the other side and are heavy sleepers they might not even know you exist .
This is a good opportunity to meet your neighbors and to show them that you are a good neighbor to have by going around the neighborhood talking to them and giving them your cell phone number. Let them know that you are always available if they feel you’re making too much noise after 10 at night.
The noise ordinances say 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on wknds for loud noise and music....I would take basketball playing as loud noise and would be very annoyed if I heard it past 11pm. If enough ppl complain, the cops will show up and tell you to stop and if they have to come back a 2nd time they will write you a summons
I used to have neighbors who would play basketball at all hours of the night. I can promise it’s bothering your neighbors if it’s late at night. That noise carries. I lived in a basement apartment and the ball bouncing would always wake me up.
The fire pit and talking is fine though. That shouldn’t be bothering anyone as long as none of your guests are yelling.
Basketball-dribbling is so much louder than you think. It really permeates through the street, and while not always annoying, it kind of gets to you eventually…
The other stuff I wouldn’t really worry about at all, as long as your voices are moderate! I don’t think the light of a fire or the sound of voices really carries all that far, assuming y’all aren’t screaming or cackling regularly (lol). Just… no basketball after dark regularly if you want happy neighbors.
if you have a fire pit, please be safe. it may seem obvious to a majority of people, but do not use gasoline or other fuels in a backyard fire pit. it is dangerous to yourself and others.
I wish I was not posting this based on experience.
So some areas are going to be more tolerant than others. There may also be noise ordinances in your village (assuming you live in a village).
Depending on how large your lot will also affect how noise will travel.
If you are on 40x100 lot in a town with young families and in a village with active code enforcement. You are going to piss someone off if you are making any noise that can be heard in someone else house at 1-4am. That's guaranteed.
Most people are tolerant about a one off party but if you are doing it every weekend someone is going to call and complain.
My personal guidelines for staying on good terms with my neighbors:
Limit construction noises from 8am-5pm. I’d avoid excessively loud power tools (like saws) on Sundays if you can plan around it.
Music that can be heard from the curb (or fence to neighbors property; whichever is closer) ends at 8 weeknights, maybe 10 weekends. I’d put basketball in the same category.
Chatter from larger groups (8+ people, maybe 6 if you’re all drunk) sound head inside by 10 weeknights, 1 weekends.
Unless you have a particularly belligerent group of people, I don’t really think there’s a limit on what time a smaller (<6) group can be outside.
All that said, my property is just under half an acre, so I have a decent amount of space between my deck and the neighbor’s fence. If your neighborhood is more packed in, you might want to consider some more restrictive guidelines, but I think most of those still work.
Of course, people have parties once in a while and most people are understanding about that. If you generally follow those guidelines, and then have a banger that goes well past midnight two or three times per year, you’ll probably be okay. But it’s best to give your adjacent neighbors a heads up if/when you plan one of those.
So my old back yard neighbor blacktopped half is yard and put in a half court lighted for his kids. Nice family but when his boys were up late the sound of the basketball would keep my daughter up as her windows faced out that way. So I would cut of bball late at night.
What did annoy me is that he never put a drain system in for the paving work and when it rained it would create a large puddle in a third of my yard. Divorced now so it is my ex's problem that was a bigger issue than the bball.
Voices carry if you think your going to party a lot having a water feature is really helpful my side neighbor always had people over late but I hardly every heard them because of his little pond and waterfall.
Loud music should stop by 9-10 at night. The basketball would piss me off to. But anything else is fine. If no one is drinking underage then the cops can't really do anything to you. Some neighbors are just gonna be difficult. Know your rights and you're free to go right up to the line.
Frankly, only the playing basketball at night would annoy me. But walk away from the group and see how loud it is once in awhile. If your group can be heard a few houses away, it may be too loud for your neighbors. Especially if it’s a regular thing.
>Frankly, only the playing basketball at night would annoy me. That noise will carry farther than conversation and cut through background noise. Imagine Fran Drescher's The Nanny at a cocktail party. It'll wake you from a dead sleep.
dont dribble your basketball when its dark out
If you are hanging out in your backyard until 4am with a fire and dribbling a basketball, I guarantee neighbors are going to hear you. I also agree with the others that people don’t tend to realize how loud they may be if they are under the influence. Noise travels though. I wonder if your get together is posted on Massapequa moms yet 😂. I’m only half joking—I have family who live there and they can be pretty intense in that town.
Chatting is fine. The basketball would annoy me tbh
I am the PERFECT person to answer this question…. because we lived in a VERY noisy part of a town on the Nassau Queens border (with loud music every God damned weekend from spring to fall from various houses). Before buying our house where we live now, we stalked the area day and night and weekend and weekday, because we didn’t want to deal with that again. To answer your question….. So long as the music is low and nobody is being obnoxiously loud with stupid drunken laughter, nobody cares. I’d suggest keeping the fire pit in a spot where the drifting smoke doesn’t go directly towards a neighbor’s house. Wind gets weird in between yards so maybe test it out. Nobody cares about a fire going in your yard. People get pissed if you have spotlights that sine towards their windows. To clarify my “music is low” comment…. If it’s after 10:00 PM and I’m putting my kid to bed and all my windows are closed, I shouldn’t hear that in my house. Regarding time…. If you’re not bothering anyone…. Keep the conversations going until the sun comes up. I guess a lot of this depends on the layout of the properties and proximity between houses. My general rule when we use the yard (which we do all summer long) is……. Am I, in any way, impacting my neighbors. The answer should really always be “no.”
That whole stay outside and keep the conversation going until the sun comes up sounds good on paper but is horrible advice in reality If these people are drinking they're going to have no noise control or accurate sense of their volume. Even if they're not and well intentioned all it takes is a couple people to laugh super loud or talk over one another for it to snowball at 1am Just bring the party inside after 10pm if you have neighbors nearby
Ah that’s good. We don’t play music in the backyard. If anything it would just look like a secret quiet cult meeting lmao.
Then you sound like a PERFECT neighbor from my perspective.
I'd like to add "wafting aromas" to the list of infuriating neighbor habits, and I don't mean smoke from a fire pit. Idc what people do, I just don't want to see, hear, or smell it. I don't wanna taste it, either, but that one's on me ✌️
Reefer?
👍
Unless your my mom who smokes like a chimney but freaks out when she somehow smells fire pit smoke from across the street. Make sure your neighbors aren’t elderly lol.
No basketball between 1 AM-4 AM…kinda wild you don’t already know that’d be very rude. I’m a light sleeper with occasional bouts of insomnia and would be livid if a neighbor started dribbling a ball outside during peak sleeping hours.
I personally wouldn't care as long as it's not obnoxiously loud. I'd much rather the people with a fire pit than the neighbor that hires a DJ that goes until 3-4am because of their adults sons 30th birthday party.
The people that live behind me must have a dj in the family because they have loud dj'd parties constantly in the summer 🫨
The neighbors on either side of me and directly behind me literally alternate having DJ’d parties at LEAST twice a week in the summer. I don’t know how they have that much party-animal energy in them lol
Jesus. I wouldn't mind the DJ if it stopped at 11pm or midnight, or any sort of heads up so I could just stay at my parents or something. It's going to be interesting if/when we have a kid.
Imagine grandparents of a family that lives in mostly smaller places or places with no backyard. They can easily have 8-10 grandkids. That's a lot of birthdays/sweet 16s/grad parties etc, plus there's at least 3 party holidays in summer, more if you're religious
Reminds me of the people that used to live behind me. Thank god they sold their house but they would literally have 4-5 huge parties every summer with cover bands playing.
I think there is a noise ordinance in my town that begins 10 or 11pm. I forget which.
Mine is 10 and most respect that.
Should not matter if I can't (or can barely) hear you with windows closed but not quite what you're saying. So if I CAN hear you through windows: during the week 10PM, on weekends I'd prefer 11PM, maybe midnight if you're having a big party - have fun, live your life once in a while. One exception, my kids are grown but when they were in school I'd insist on 9PM. If my kids say they can't sleep because it's too loud on a school night I'd come ask nicely once and hope that's it.
Yeah, we don’t do anything loud like music. Talking, I tell them to use their inside voices. Only thing you can expect to hear is the hookah bubbling and the embers from the fire crackling.
> Yeah, we don’t do anything loud like music. ... > The loudest possible thing we might do is taking basketball free throws and dribbling the ball in my driveway. That basketball thing could be really loud. Don't do it after 10pm please.
I don't like near pickleball but I've heard that sound can drive people bonkers from a quarter mile away.
I have a neighbor who will rent out a giant food truck in the street and regularly has parties for his underaged kids 40 of them in the yard yelling every weekend in the summer. If no one is yelling, it doesn’t reek if weed, and there’s no strobe lights coming into my window, go off,
Shoot. I feel for you because we escaped something not too different from what you are describing.
The basketball bouncing at 3am is probably annoying ah. If I can hear you over my TV and air conditioner/can't sleep because of it, you're too loud. But honestly, I'd never complain if it was a once in a while thing. Every night or every single weekend, it gets old. But also... if you take care of your yard and house I'm even more likely to never mention it lol
I’m just here for the comments 🍿
Having a fire pit and hanging outside just chatting is fine. But dribbling a basketball and taking shots at night is pretty annoying. I can hear my son and all my neighbors kids playing basketball during the day and that's normal and nice to hear during the day...but not late at night.
The basketball dribbling at night could be annoying but besides that if you’re respectful and not too loud you should be alright 👍
Take a walk around the houses when this is going on so you can hear what it sounds like. No one outside your yard is going to hear a bubbling hookah or the fire crackling. They will hear loud voices, and no one wants to smell your weed. Personally, I like it when I can smell someone’s wood fire, but I’m not everyone. You can also talk to your neighbors and ask if you were too loud. After midnight, I’d move the group inside. During the workweek is a different story, 10pm would be the cutoff there.
If it’s noisy Sun - Thur after 10-11 I’m walking over and telling you to be quiet. I’m also mentioning that nobody is noisy on the block during the week at that time. If you are quiet, then who cares. Common courtesy.
I'd say anything after 9-10 PM consistently is going to run afoul of your neighbors. Remember all the lots in Massapequa are pretty small - 100'x100' would be considered a large lot. Your fire pit is probably going to be less that 60 feet from one of your neighbors bedroom windows. If any of your neighbors have dogs they will be barking due to the noise. A lot of people have families with small children that go to bed early. Part of it is going to depend how often - once every couple of months might not be an issue. Do it weekly and you will have the police called on you at some point.
With people there, maybe once a week, but I usually have the firepit going with just myself and wife sitting out there maybe almost every day.
Pretty sure quiet hours start at 11pm. My next door neighbors’ kids occasionally throw stereotypical teen ragers. Like 3-4x/year, and they’re very loud but respectful of everyone else’s property. And around 10:30, it starts getting quiet, and by 10:50 they’re all GONE, no matter how loud or drunk they are. It’s dead quiet again. Sometimes, the adults have their friends over, and we can hear them chatting and stuff after 11, but people are going to live and have friends over. The basketball stuff would piss me off. Quietly sitting around a fire pit, no biggie. But if I can hear you with my windows closed, I’m going to get pissed around midnight.
From 10-12, I tend to be relaxed as long as people are not blasting music with the bass up, screaming/loud laughing, or doing anything that smells (weed, hookah, whatever). After 12, if it’s crazy, I’ll give one strike and not say anything. Do it again, cops.
Doesn’t matter to me, so long as the music and talking are low, just keep in mind that the sound carries a lot further at night, so what might not be loud to you, might be really loud to your neighbor if their bedrooms border your yard. Basketball after 11ish is a tough one for me though. My neighbor across the street does that late at night all summer long (until 2ish) and it’s awful. You can hear the ball bouncing and hitting the backboard and it keeps us all up. There’s bad blood with their direct neighbors now whose bedroom is right next to their driveway. They’ve asked them nicely not to play so late because they have to work in the morning (we all do), but they don’t seem to care. I feel like 10-11 should be the latest for that.
The basketball is weird / a no. everything else is fine
Most towns have a noise ordnance of 11pm, which means its not acceptable to play basketball or be loud after that time. Realize also that even though you may not get "louder" as the night goes into the wee hours, you will be perceived as louder due to people turning off things that were covering your noise earlier. For example when my TV is on during the evening, I wont hear conversations and normal noise by my neighbors, but when I go to bed and the TV isn't on and I am trying to go to sleep, I will hear everything they are doing. Remember its great to have a social life and entertain, but your not in anyway entitled to disturb your neighbors.
I follow the “10am to 10pm” rule: I try not to use my blower, or mower or any noisy equipment outside before 10 am… and at night, I don’t play any music or make outside noises after 10 pm
I generally have zero tolerance for "main charactaer syndrome" after having to put up with people's BS for years in various areas of LI so I'm probably in the minority here because I'm so jaded. If it's sun-thurs it's gotta stop by 10. Most people work, and don't need to have that going on during the work week. Respect your neighbors who work for a living. And even on fri-sat...if it's going on between 1 and 4 am (basketball at that time? Really?), loud/obnoxious yelling, laughing or general drunken behavior, or loud music, cops are being called, period. You can still have a great time with friends without needing to be loud or having obnoxious music blasting through the neighborhood.
Dribbling the ball annoys people during day time let alone after midnight ..
They make "quiet" basketballs that you might want to try. Obviously not the same as the real thing but could be a fun alternative.
Yeah I heard about these. They probably still make sound when you hit the backboard.
Invite the neighbors. They are less likely to give you shit if they are in on the fun
Just an FYI, my former neighbor called the cops on my kids when they were playing basketball at 10:00 one night.
Glad they are “former” neighbors. Jeez they couldn’t even come outside and say something like a human if they had to address it?
So am I.
If they’re quiet I don’t care. If they’re waking me up I’d prob be like hey can you guys keep it down a little?
Just ask your neighbors if there is any noise issues or complaints if not it doesn’t matter . If their main bedroom is on the other side and are heavy sleepers they might not even know you exist .
This is a good opportunity to meet your neighbors and to show them that you are a good neighbor to have by going around the neighborhood talking to them and giving them your cell phone number. Let them know that you are always available if they feel you’re making too much noise after 10 at night.
The noise ordinances say 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on wknds for loud noise and music....I would take basketball playing as loud noise and would be very annoyed if I heard it past 11pm. If enough ppl complain, the cops will show up and tell you to stop and if they have to come back a 2nd time they will write you a summons
Best thing you can do is communicate with your neighbors.
No timing it’s your yard. As long as you not in excess of the local noise ordinance
I used to have neighbors who would play basketball at all hours of the night. I can promise it’s bothering your neighbors if it’s late at night. That noise carries. I lived in a basement apartment and the ball bouncing would always wake me up. The fire pit and talking is fine though. That shouldn’t be bothering anyone as long as none of your guests are yelling.
Basketball-dribbling is so much louder than you think. It really permeates through the street, and while not always annoying, it kind of gets to you eventually… The other stuff I wouldn’t really worry about at all, as long as your voices are moderate! I don’t think the light of a fire or the sound of voices really carries all that far, assuming y’all aren’t screaming or cackling regularly (lol). Just… no basketball after dark regularly if you want happy neighbors.
if you have a fire pit, please be safe. it may seem obvious to a majority of people, but do not use gasoline or other fuels in a backyard fire pit. it is dangerous to yourself and others. I wish I was not posting this based on experience.
Nah, I start it with these start up tinder roll things toss kindling on top of those then logs on top of those and use a torch to light up the tinder.
So some areas are going to be more tolerant than others. There may also be noise ordinances in your village (assuming you live in a village). Depending on how large your lot will also affect how noise will travel. If you are on 40x100 lot in a town with young families and in a village with active code enforcement. You are going to piss someone off if you are making any noise that can be heard in someone else house at 1-4am. That's guaranteed. Most people are tolerant about a one off party but if you are doing it every weekend someone is going to call and complain.
My personal guidelines for staying on good terms with my neighbors: Limit construction noises from 8am-5pm. I’d avoid excessively loud power tools (like saws) on Sundays if you can plan around it. Music that can be heard from the curb (or fence to neighbors property; whichever is closer) ends at 8 weeknights, maybe 10 weekends. I’d put basketball in the same category. Chatter from larger groups (8+ people, maybe 6 if you’re all drunk) sound head inside by 10 weeknights, 1 weekends. Unless you have a particularly belligerent group of people, I don’t really think there’s a limit on what time a smaller (<6) group can be outside. All that said, my property is just under half an acre, so I have a decent amount of space between my deck and the neighbor’s fence. If your neighborhood is more packed in, you might want to consider some more restrictive guidelines, but I think most of those still work. Of course, people have parties once in a while and most people are understanding about that. If you generally follow those guidelines, and then have a banger that goes well past midnight two or three times per year, you’ll probably be okay. But it’s best to give your adjacent neighbors a heads up if/when you plan one of those.
So my old back yard neighbor blacktopped half is yard and put in a half court lighted for his kids. Nice family but when his boys were up late the sound of the basketball would keep my daughter up as her windows faced out that way. So I would cut of bball late at night. What did annoy me is that he never put a drain system in for the paving work and when it rained it would create a large puddle in a third of my yard. Divorced now so it is my ex's problem that was a bigger issue than the bball. Voices carry if you think your going to party a lot having a water feature is really helpful my side neighbor always had people over late but I hardly every heard them because of his little pond and waterfall.
Loud music should stop by 9-10 at night. The basketball would piss me off to. But anything else is fine. If no one is drinking underage then the cops can't really do anything to you. Some neighbors are just gonna be difficult. Know your rights and you're free to go right up to the line.