Water soaking brickwork from neighbour's leaking toilet

robgoingcrazy

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Sorry to see this is still going on - not much to add, but just a few fairly random thoughts.

There's a white (?) plastic overflow pipe hiding behind your loo waste over his roof... anything leaking from this? A plastic bag loosely over the end will catch drips less drastically than a cork!

If you are out for a day - better if longer - can you turn your water off at the mains... any change in dampness?

The black (plastic) kitchen waste (?) pipe running diagonally toward the problem area... it's not come unclipped or split in the thickness of the wall? Seems unlikely it'd cause a continuous leak.... just musing...

roger196 wrote: »

Looking at picture 1 of post 56, my first thought would be a blocked drain. Have you tried asking the neighbour to run the taps which feed into the two black pipes and watch what happens.
Have you tried pouring a bucket of water onto flat roof to see where it goes.
Apologies if these have already been suggested.

Thanks for these ideas, will chew them over, have got my builder chap coming finally this weekend, if it IS a plumbing or drains problem British Gas can foot the bill as I had their man out and he said it was nothing to do with either.

Woke up to a new problem on the other side today, all the coping stones off the garden wall neighbouring the other side have disappeared over the last few days, Estate Agent not helpful, apparently current owner is building society and all they care about is selling it ASAP and not doing any work at all so the boarded up window etc stays and they can't help with the coping stones getting robbed, the last owner was evicted and broke back in so is probably mad enough to attempt something like stealing big slabs of stone...

But that's another thread.

At the moment I am tempted to sell up, cash in my equity, and get a nice modern shared ownership apartment in the city centre, which would be cheaper to heat, probably safer, no garden to maintain, I suppose there will be cons too, as I do love where I live at the moment (ideal for city centre but also on the outskirts of urban sprawl for country).

2014 might be an interesting year... :eek:

robgoingcrazy

An update at last, with builder's input!

Like British Gas bloke, said it looks 99% certain it's not coming from inside my house, check inside couldn't find anything, the corner is drier than usual despite torrential rain for last few days so we've ruled out rain, he wanted to look in neighbour's house but he wasn't in.

I caught neighbour 5 minutes later, told him a second bloke as said it's not coming from mine, and he said it would be OK if we went and had a look when builder comes to do mend my stolen wall (apparently they were yorkshire stone and worth nicking, however only the ones on the neighbouring wall (other side) went, which makes me think it was the evicted neighbour coming back for what he felt was his...

Meanwhile I have just heard a lot of commotion, banging, metallic sounds etc, coming from the vicinity of that corner, perhaps my neighbour has found the source of the water and is finally fixing it. :eek:

My builder said it doesn't look like major damage has happened to my wall at the bottom so am at least not panicking the thing is going to fall down now (unless the thieves return to steal entire walls!) :T

robgoingcrazy

Apparently my neighbour has just ripped his bathroom out (in that vicinity), and said there was a leaking tap in there, underneath the bath it was all soaking, also a shower had some kind of leak, so he was running his taps to see if anything surged out, nothing so far, am waiting to see if the water in the corner dries up.

I hope it is that, or he will have ripped his bathroom out for nothing... Fingers crossed that's it!

My builder said he could have used a dye to track any leaks through hidden pipework, which I mentioned to my neighbour first but he took the more direct approach!

DaftyDuck

Yeay, why use dye when you have a sledgehammer and anger management issues... and that's my wife I'm referring to! :eek:

At least it sounds like neighbour has been stirred into action, and that your house hasn't suffered unduly.

JohnB47

Sounds like the problem has been solved. It may take a while for that damp to dry up though, so be patient. Good result hopefully.

robgoingcrazy

JohnB47 wrote: »

Sounds like the problem has been solved. It may take a while for that damp to dry up though, so be patient. Good result hopefully.

As far as I can see the water is back the same as ever today. It looked like it was drying up yesterday, in fact it wasn't that bad on Saturday after 2 days of very bad rain and before the neighbour spend 3 hours ripping out his bathroom and by the sound of it spent all day yesterday putting it back together.

It rained yesterday, but the corner still looked like it was drying.

Today, back to how it was.

So all the wisdom on here, 2 people out, all the neighbour has done, we still can't figure it out.

To say I am fed up to the back teeth of this now is an understatement...

robgoingcrazy

According the the BBC website we had "light showers" here today.

Or back in the real world, it was very heavy rain for hours and hours and hours...

So everywhere is so wet I can't even begin to make an observation but I will post back.

If I see my neighbour you may not hear from me again, as I think it will be my head he will be banging with next if I tell him his efforts have been wasted :eek:

teddysmum

My goodness, I haven't read all this thread, but am amazed that the problem is still going on. My reason ?


We had a problem which caused water to escape from an external overflow pipe and had a plumber booked. However, he was delayed (only a day or so) and, meanwhile, a neighbour reported us. This resulted in a letter from Severn Trent saying that we had to put it right or they could force us to do so. (The job was done by then, of course.)

robgoingcrazy

teddysmum wrote: »

My goodness, I haven't read all this thread, but am amazed that the problem is still going on. My reason ?


We had a problem which caused water to escape from an external overflow pipe and had a plumber booked. However, he was delayed (only a day or so) and, meanwhile, a neighbour reported us. This resulted in a letter from Severn Trent saying that we had to put it right or they could force us to do so. (The job was done by then, of course.)

If I knew what the problem was either I or my neighbour could get it sorted but nobody seems to have a clue what the actual source of the water is.

All lines of enquiry seem to be drawing a blank.

A bit like the stone robbery I had over New Year - got a letter today off police to say no lines of enquiry so case closed... So nobody goes to Jail and I get Do not pass Go and pay £250 (or more, not got final quote yet, but it's currently pouring down on a wall without any coping stones on top)

DaftyDuck

I did suggest at one point turning your water off at the mains... preferably on a dry day (so that rules out the next couple). If you could persuade your neighbour to do the same, firstly overlapping for a few hours, then yours on and his off.... That'd at least rule in/out a mains source of water, and from whom it comes...
Are you on a water meter? That'd also show almost any leak. They are really, really sensitive, and mine will pick up a slow dripping tap. If neighbour also has a water meter, and it's in the street, you can always peek at his too...particularly in the middle of the night, when he's unlikely to be having a shower, flushing the loo, or having a coffee.... slow, steady change on the meter.... That damn water has to come from you, him, or some cloud-based deity or other!