Vacant property next door causing issues (Garden and damp)

ST1991

It seems like one thing after another at the moment... as soon as one thing is sorted, we have another issue.
The house next door has been unoccupied for almost 2 years now. At some point in the near future i'm sure they will have someone moving in, but there were some boundary issues that took a long time to sort, which are now sorted. I have no idea when the house will be occupied again.

I don't have a 'great' relationship with the neighbour, but i had been emailing with her before about the boundaries and things were mostly civil so i've emailed her this morning (my only form of contact for them) to let them know about some issues. I now have no idea what to do...
I've been speaking with the owners daughter, as the actual owner is in very ill health. The daughter is also now caring for her husband - so i appreciate they are in a difficult situation, but i informed them of some issues this morning, which was worded kindly as opposed to 'this is your fault!' and immediately got a very short response.

Foxes...
Their garden is getting overgrown, as you can imagine with no-one living there. A few months ago they came around to clear it a bit, but left everything in refuse sacks in the garden so all the weeds/trimmings are just left there all bagged up on one side of the garden. Now there are a family of foxes living there, destroying their garden. They have also damaged a fence panel between us so they can get into our garden too. I have noticed the foxes in our garden too a handful of times, but it is becoming more regular.
I have a dog, so i'm not sure if they pose any threat to him. He is fully wormed and flea'd etc, and thankfully not the type of dog to roll around in their mess. I'm just unsure if there is anything else for us to be wary about.
I'm also 7 months pregnant and concerned if they pose any threat to me (beyond having to clear up their mess and having a big hole in our fence...)
The neighbour told me it doesn't matter if the house is empty or not, and that foxes will set up home anywhere...

Fences...
Leading on from the above, the foxes have damaged a fence panel. The neighbour also has a large bush between their greenhouse and the fence which is overgrown and is pushing the fence over. At some point it'll be 90 degrees....! but it's not that bad yet. We also had some high winds earlier this year that caused us to repair the panels on the other side of our garden, but we didn't touch the ones on this side as there was ongoing boundary paperwork which was reliant on using that fence as the physical boundary.
Due to her situation caring for her mum/husband, they have no opportunity to put this right, but have said the new buyers would probably sort this at some point anyway, or asked if we could just fix it temporarily. We can't do this without pulling down the fence and basically doing their gardening for them though...?

Damp...
About 6 months ago we redecorated our downstairs living room. Made a good job of it, and used a fairly expensive wallpaper on one wall to give a nice feature. That one wall is the internal, adjoining wall with our neighbour.
Last week my partner noticed that the wall looked darker in one place, in a patch around 3/4 of the way up the wall. It's now more noticable and is clearly damp. We have no pipework or water of any type on this side of our house - and it's just in one patch. I have informed the neighbour and asked if they can check their side too so we can hopefully stop it before it becomes a bigger issue.
She has told me she checks the house regularly and there is no damp on their side.


Now... my questions.... (breathe)
What can i actually do?
I guess living with having a broken fence and foxes next door isn't the worst thing ever - just an annoyance.
What can we do about the damp patch? Assuming she is right, and there is no damp on her side, how can we fix this? What could've caused it? I cannot see any way for it to have been caused by us... We keep our house warm, heated, and the windows are open during the day when it's not wet outside.
We literally just finished decorating our bedroom which is directly above this, and there was no sign of damp on this wall from above.
The houses are old (300 y/o solid stone construction), so we're trying our best to minimise damp already.

Bonus extra info - 
Should i make my insurance company aware at this point... or not? (The reason i wonder this, is because I have to let the insurance expire at renewal next month, as my ex refuses to contact them and take his name off the policy - and they won't do that without his permission so i can only let it lapse and take out a brand new policy from next month)

shorty31

I think being 7 months pregnant may be making these things all seem a bigger issue to you, then they actually are.  Personally I would repair the fence, either temporarily or replace it.  I can’t imagine there is any legal responsibility for the existing or new neighbours to do so.  It seems you have their permission to cut back the foliage that could cause more issues in the future, so I would take the opportunity to get it done.

regarding the damp patch, absolutely no expert, but I have lived in a very old property with stone walls. What kind of paper did you use?  Stone walls need to breath, if you have used some sort of vinyl could you have created a barrier and that is now why moisture is staining your paper?  If you think it is damp I would get someone in to take a look.

ST1991

Thanks - i think you are right!
We've had so much stuff to do in the house, my partner has been amazing but all the little bits are getting on top of me and that probably is related to hormones at this point.
I think we'll do a temporary repair to the fence, and cut back some of the bushes on their side at the same time so it has more time before it's fully broken. As it is technically their fence not ours, i don't want to (and to be honest... can't really afford to!) replace the whole thing at the moment.

I'm actually unsure about the type of wallpaper i used, just that it was a nice one (lol...)
We've had no issues in any of the other rooms, including one room we decorated over a year ago, and the bedrooms upstairs which had very very old wallpaper on them with layers and layers of paint that we've just recently stripped back and have re-wallpapered too.

The only problem walls we've had for damp have been the external ones, but even then it hasn't caused the wallpaper to stain in the same way. None of the internal/party walls have been an issue -which is why i have my suspicions about this particular patch.

stragglebod

Who owns the fence? Who is responsible for maintaining the boundary? The answers may not neccessarly be the same for both questions.

theoretica

For the garden, I would see the only reasonable request to be whether they would be happy if you did X to their garden - whether mowing their grass when you mow yours, pruning, weeding their side of the boundary etc.  I appreciate you have a lot on and want to minimise work, but it's their land and they can neglect it.  Chicken wire wouldn't be pretty, but it would be fast and cheap and might keep a casual fox out.

The wall patch is an odd one - what was the wall covering before.  How high is it and is there anything likely on the other side - kitchen sink, chimney?  Does chemical damp seem to fit the description? https://www.dampconsultant.co.uk/pages/damp-types.php

ST1991

Thanks - i think i've just massively over-reacted as a whole...
It seems everything we start in this house uncovers bigger problems - nothing is simple and all those 'little things' have really started to get to me!

We're going to temporarily fix the holes in the fence on our side, as the fence belongs to the neighbour.
The foxes have come through our garden and made holes in the fence on the other side too, so we'll also have to fix that.
We can't really get access to their garden without climbing over the fence (which is now at an angle into our garden) but we will try to trim the giant shrub as much as possible and see if we can prop the whole thing back up before it falls. Hopefully their sale will go through soon and we can decide with the new owner what to do with the fence at that point. We certainly don't have the spare money at the moment to erect a whole new fence!

For the damp - i now think that maybe chemical damp seems most likely...! I can't see that it is coming from an actual leak, and we do have other small patches of 'salty' plaster in the house, just not big enough to cause a problem.

I'm assuming i can just leave it then, and it won't actually cause any damage beyond what it's already done to the wallpaper? I've got half a roll of it left under the stairs, so at some point after baby is born we can always just strip that one place, fix it (somehow...?) in that small affected patch, and then re-wallpaper!
I was more concerned about it being caused by a leak or water ingress, but now i've seen chemical damp that seems like the most viable explanation.

FreeBear

ST1991 said: For the damp - i now think that maybe chemical damp seems most likely...

Save your money - Those chemical injections do not cure damp problems. When used with the waterproof render/plaster that is usually slapped on a wall as part of the full "treatment", it just masks the problem for a few years.

If you think about it, they inject a water based goo in to holes - If the wall is damp, the stuff never dries out. They claim that it penetrates the brick, yet can not provide any peer reviewed evidence to show that it does (or that it even works). The "science" that these damp proofing companies use is based on half truths and poorly understood principles.

TELLIT01

Sorting out the damp issue needs to be the priority.  Broken fencing and an untidy garden, even a very overgrown one, is not likely to a priority for the family members of the neighbours.  Loading them down with all the problems is only likely to result in them not engaging at all.