Neighbors and the Quality of Life

About 4 months ago, we got a new neighbor. Harry had owned the house next door for about 4 years, he bought it about the same time as we bought ours but he chose to rent it out, until 4 months ago. About 2 months ago, Harry showed up at our door to complain. His complaint was that our hot tub was keeping him awake at night and he thought that we should move it. He was having to sleep with ear plugs in and that, he stated, was ruining his quality of life. My husband apologized for the inconvenience and said that we would try to find away to make it quieter. He again suggested that we should move it or shut it off. As it's winter here and below freezing, shutting it off isn't an option unless we want the pipes and whatever else to freeze up, to say nothing about the fact that it's in winter we want to use our hot tub and to heat it up each time would take hours (in which time I'm sure the urge would have passed) and cost more in electricity than we care to pay. Well we did what we could with insulation and foam to make it quieter but that still wasn't good enough for Harry. He wanted us to move it. The problem is that this hot tub is built into our deck! Our deck cost us over $5000 to have built and it was designed to have the hot tub built into it right outside of our bedroom window. We sleep 3 feet away from this hot tub and have our window wide open at night and I don't wear ear plugs and it is not disturbing my sleep or ruining the quality of my life. When we questioned Harry as to who would be paying to rip our deck apart and move the hot tub, he of course said that we would have too. Harry never once worried about the quality of our life when he rented his house out to a single mom with 4 children who were quite taken with the fact that we had a hot tub. At that time the hot tub was just in our yard, on the grass, right out in the open and every time we went in it we were watched and talked to incessantly by the neighbors kids. Don't get me wrong, I was a single mom and I love kids but not when I'm in my hot tub trying to relax and have some quiet time. This was what caused us to spend the $5000+ and build a deck and put up a fence blocking us from the neighbors. This is how it ended up on "that" side of the yard. Well, Harry chose to call the bylaw officer on us and he came to inspect and was a little miffed at the idea that Harry could even hear the hot tub from his window. It was determined that we could keep it where it was, leave it running and that we had gone over and above the call of the law in keeping the sound down. Now the thing that has intrigued me about the whole thing is that Harry lives all alone in this huge 5 bedroom house. He chose to sleep in the bedroom closest to our hot tub. He then thinks that we should call in a construction crew and dismantle our deck and move our hot tub to somewhere else when all he has to do is walk a few steps down his hall into one of his other 4 bedrooms. I guess that too would "ruin his quality of life." Our quality remains, I suppose, inconsequential. No wonder there are wars and rumors of wars......

View from my deck - same as before, COLD but I know summer is coming and that winter is past!