Issue with neighbour

albalad

duncan32 wrote: »

If I cannot find a drain to go into, what do you suggest? I thought about perhaps running the water butt into a second water butt, so that I have a lot of water storage before any potential over flow.
Duncan

how about fitting a garden tap or quick hose fitting to the water butt near the bottom and using the water to water the lawn or plants.
alternatively run the hose to a visible drain and empty it as when required

Ms_Chocaholic

Could the OP's problems be solved by a soakaway - though I don't know enough about this to offer advice, just a thought !

duncan32

Errata wrote: »

Wouldn't the simplest solution be to actually use the water in the butt ?

Yeh, you're quite right. The thing is, the butt fills if its torrential all night or day and there is no one to empty it. I have been poor in the past at ensuring that it is continually emptied, so when it has stopped working it is too near the top and quickly overflows. The chances of it being blocked are now as near to zero as you can get, and I intend to religiously empty it after rain in future. I am not sure that this will be enough though, seeing as I have upset the neighbour with the previous flooding. My plan now is to get a couple of slabs up and let him see that I am doing that. If there is a drain, I will join a downpipe (I say I, I will get a competant friend involved!?) if not, I will try to convince him that all I can do is increase my vigilance on the amount of water in the butt, maybe add a second to double the capacity before any overflow is required. Hopefully, this will solve it. Sound reasonable?

Duncan

zebidee1

I would think he would feel happier just knowing that you are now going to treat the situation seriously and you take his points/feelings into consideration. There's nothing worse than a neighbour who thinks the problem is trivial.......just because it seems so from his side. Well done for accepting the points made to you.

I think albalad had a good suggestion as an alternative if you find you can't sink a permanent drain.

aminchom

Anothr solution is something like this
It fills your water butt to full, then diverts the rest back into the downpipe.
Hope tha helps.

andyrules

Can't you just re-route the pipe into the nearest drain? It's not a big job, even to extend the pipe. We had it done - didn't take long or cost much.

Just a thought - our neighbours caused considerable damage to our property by their neglect and apathy. Our loss adjuster said that if we'd had evidence that they were aware, we could have sued them for damages.

I_love_Airedales

If the houses are the same or similar in your road can you see if anyone else has an extension the same size as yours and ask them how they dealt with their down pipes.
It would indeed be awful to fall out badly over a neighbour, your life would be very miserable. Then we would have to give you support for that! Which we would gladly.

HugoSP

I would consider a soakaway. This is effectively a 1m cubed hole that is filled with large rubble then .3mm membrane is laid on top to accept 200mm depth of soil.

This must be 5 metres away from any property or building. The run off from the downpipe is then taken in 4 inch underground drainage to this soakaway.

You will find that this can take a large amount of rain water depending on your soil type. Your building control department may need to be made aware of it.

I can empathise with the other posters and your neigbour. I had politely work with one neigbour to a property we own when his chimney was leaking through our party wall and into our house! He did agree to get his chimney lined, which I organised and he paid for. This solved the problem.

I would consider the suggestions here and speak to your neigbour and tell him that you are looking for a good long term solution.

Work with him now and you'll not be fighting him later.

griff.

OP - Paddy's Mum is quite correct is stating that this is an 'old law' matter.

However, it is equally an old law matter than people have the right to enjoy their property without other people (even the king's soldiers) entering and making improvements without due process.

Your neighbour has overstepped (literally) the mark by coming into your property and undertaking construction work. Not only does he have no right to do this, you need to keep in mind that any reasonable court would award you the cost of reinstatement of your property.

I think it's time to take a cool, hard long look at all of this. People cannot simply take the law into their own hands.

HugoSP

Griff makes a good point but I have to say I know people who I consider to be very reasonable 99% of the time who wouldn't hesitate to do this if they felt it necessary.

The reason is that they feel they are doing what they consider appropriate under the circumstances. However if someone posted here that they wanted to do just as the OPs neighbour did i suspect no one who has commented here and defended the neighbour would encourage him to do just as he did.

I think that Duncan needs to handle this carefully. It would be easy for him to start litigation for trespass, criminal damage etc but it seems that he is not about to go down that path.

Perhaps he may like to make it politely clear to his neighbour that, whilst he understands the reasons why his neighbour did what he did he objects in principle to trespass. Then leave it at that.

I still say he needs to have a dialogue about the drainage problem though.