Downpipe issue

AvivaNightmare

Hi, 

I live in a terrace row of 5 houses, i am 2nd house in, the 2 houses either side of me and I have the same run of guttering ( we maintian our own strip ) either side has a downpipe. 
The neighbour who has maintained the downpipe to the right of my house assures me its 'his wall ' ( when i complained about a wood burning chimney erected outside my bedroom window at the back of house ) 
At the front of the house we each have adjoining garages and small porches
His downpipe orginally had a section of pipe that carried the waste water frm the down pipe across his porch and down to drainage, he removed this piece of pipe some time ago and added a bit of pipe that diverted to the garage roofs, then that went. 
When I had my garage roof and porch roof replaced the roofers told me he had blocked the water drainage and so they put a lip in my porch roof so water drained off my porch and onto my gagrage roof. 

He has replaced the downpipe and has turned the exit of the pipe around to face my porch roof, so water from both neighbours and my own will now come down and pool ontop of my porch roof. 

Can he do this?

I do not have a good relation ship with him due to 20 plus years of almost daily DIY ( i am sure he lives in a tardis!) he has added two extensions on the rear of his house and is doing all the DIY himself and it appears he is constantly fixing his own DIY, when i had 5 severe asthma attacks in 1 year and basically told him to moved the wood stove chimney or i would seek legal advice he moved it along, i have been told someone else nearby was told to remove theirs. I have had burning embers in my garden from the stove, poly sheets from his extension blown into my garden, he also did DIY constantly throughout lockdown despite being asked not too as i was working from home due to shielding.

I have attached a photo 
many thanks 

travis-powers

That amount of water on your porch roof is going to reduce its lifespan he needs to address that before you start having problems.
woodburners need to be fitted by a HETAS installer you can diy but it needs to be inspected and signed off by building control

thegreenone

I would email the photo and explanation to the Local Authority Building control office for advice.  It may worsen your relations with next door but, as above, that amount of water will cause problems.  

AvivaNightmare

Thanks, I’ve just been & checked and despite asking his wife to ask him to adjust the pipe he doesn’t done so. 

I will now send an email & photos to the building control office. 

Section62

travis-powers said:

That amount of water on your porch roof is going to reduce its lifespan he needs to address that before you start having problems.

It is difficult to tell from the photo and description what we are looking at, but if that water pooling is on the OP's roof then it is for the OP to fix, not the neighbour.

Pooling of water on a flat roof is due to it not having adequate slope towards the drainage. Having additional water going onto the roof from a neighbour's RWP won't improve matters, but that isn't the fundamental problem.

And if the brown RWP in the picture is what the neighbour has put in, then it is clear that the pooling is happening even when there is zero flow from that pipe.

BC might take an interest if work has been done recently if it is defective and/or without consent.  That might include the OP's apparently defective roofing.  However, discharging rainwater from a higher roof onto a lower one isn't necessarily something BC would have concerns about.

Whether the neighbour can legally change the RWP so it discharges in this way will depend on what the deeds say. But given the RWP serves a shared run of gutter there's a good probability of some kind of wording about shared rights of drainage which is sufficiently vague to give the neighbour the legal right to do what they have done. The OP should check this to confirm though.

Out of interest OP, what is the white thing visible in the photo about a third of the way up on the left-hand side?  It looks a bit like a plastic waste pipe fitting. Is that yours, or on another property?

AvivaNightmare

Section62 said:

travis-powers said:

That amount of water on your porch roof is going to reduce its lifespan he needs to address that before you start having problems.

It is difficult to tell from the photo and description what we are looking at, but if that water pooling is on the OP's roof then it is for the OP to fix, not the neighbour.

Pooling of water on a flat roof is due to it not having adequate slope towards the drainage. Having additional water going onto the roof from a neighbour's RWP won't improve matters, but that isn't the fundamental problem.

And if the brown RWP in the picture is what the neighbour has put in, then it is clear that the pooling is happening even when there is zero flow from that pipe.

BC might take an interest if work has been done recently if it is defective and/or without consent.  That might include the OP's apparently defective roofing.  However, discharging rainwater from a higher roof onto a lower one isn't necessarily something BC would have concerns about.

Whether the neighbour can legally change the RWP so it discharges in this way will depend on what the deeds say. But given the RWP serves a shared run of gutter there's a good probability of some kind of wording about shared rights of drainage which is sufficiently vague to give the neighbour the legal right to do what they have done. The OP should check this to confirm though.

Out of interest OP, what is the white thing visible in the photo about a third of the way up on the left-hand side?  It looks a bit like a plastic waste pipe fitting. Is that yours, or on another property?

The water pooling on the porch roof is recent rain ( last night ) with the additional water from the neighbours downpipe.

The original downpipe had a pipe leading to drainage this has now been removed.

Can i ask how is my porch roof defective ?
All houses on the estate are built the same, bar they have a pipe from the downpipe to the drainage, when i purchased the property 30 plus yrs ago the water from the main roof was steered to the drainage system via the neighbours downpipe and the pipe from the downpipe to the drainage, by removing this he has allowed for excess water to now collect on my porch roof ,my own porch roof has a lip added ( due to that fact that he has not allowed for the water to be able to drain off) to allow for the water on my porch roof to drain off onto the garage roof down to its guttering.

The white pipe is the pipe from the boiler in the kitchen. it is about 3 ft away from the porch roof but looks nearer due to angle of phote.

Section62

AvivaNightmare said:

The water pooling on the porch roof is recent rain ( last night ) with the additional water from the neighbours downpipe.

The original downpipe had a pipe leading to drainage this has now been removed.

Can i ask how is my porch roof defective ?

Because water is pooling on it, rather than draining away. The roof should have sufficient and continuous slope towards an edge or gutter so within a reasonable amount of time all standing water drains away.  Pooling like that suggests either the roof doesn't have sufficient slope, or that a 'ridge' has been created which stops the natural drainage occurring.

AvivaNightmare said:

All houses on the estate are built the same, bar they have a pipe from the downpipe to the drainage, when i purchased the property 30 plus yrs ago the water from the main roof was steered to the drainage system via the neighbours downpipe and the pipe from the downpipe to the drainage, by removing this he has allowed for excess water to now collect on my porch roof ,my own porch roof has a lip added ( due to that fact that he has not allowed for the water to be able to drain off) to allow for the water on my porch roof to drain off onto the garage roof down to its guttering.

As above, the pooling isn't due to 'excess water', but instead due to your roof not working as it should.

If your roof was Ok then the only problem that might be caused by his RWP is if it is raining so hard that the flow from 'his' RWP exceeds the capacity of the gutter on your porch roof and makes it overflow.  But that is a very different problem to the one shown in your picture.

To be honest, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the 'lip' being added to your roof, nor how the roofer thought this would help. A 'lip' (or 'upstand') would normally stop the movement of water in that direction, rather than help drain it off a different way.

AvivaNightmare said:

The white pipe is the pipe from the boiler in the kitchen.

Thanks. It wasn't really clear from the picture what it was. By 'pipe', do you mean the flue, or a drain? The diameter (relative to the RWP) looks quite small, unless that's an optical illusion. If it is the flue then it looks rather close to the window, if a drain then it appears to stop in mid-air.  You might want to post another picture of that so people can advise whether it is Ok or needs modification. (Gas boiler fumes can also exacerbate asthma problems)

Rosa_Damascena

thegreenone said:

I would email the photo and explanation to the Local Authority Building control office for advice.  It may worsen your relations with next door but, as above, that amount of water will cause problems.  

I wouldn't be worried about that, to me its a bit late for that given that it looks like a deliberate act of sabotage. If it wasn't going to drain over the OP's roof, presumably it would be draining onto his neighbours and we know which the neighbour would prefer. He should not have messed around with it in the first place.

Section62

Rosa_Damascena said:

 

I wouldn't be worried about that, to me its a bit late for that given that it looks like a deliberate act of sabotage. If it wasn't going to drain over the OP's roof, presumably it would be draining onto his neighbours and we know which the neighbour would prefer. He should not have messed around with it in the first place.

To avoid the OP going off on a wild goose chase, there is no evidence this is a deliberate act of sabotage.

It can't be stressed enough that a RWP discharging onto a lower roof is perfectly normal, and (depending on how the gutters have been configured) anything up to 100% of the flow coming down it could be runoff from the OP's own upper roof.

Assuming the RWP is the neighbour's responsibility then they were entitled to 'mess' around with it.  Whether or not they can legally alter it to discharge onto the OP's roof depends on what their deeds say - as I mentioned earlier in the thread.

The only thing the neighbour has definitely done wrong is not asking the OP nicely before making the change.

AvivaNightmare

Sorry ‘Lip’ was probably the wrong description, it’s a gulley to allow water onto the garage roof 

The flue can be seen in the photo below 

AvivaNightmare

Rosa_Damascena said:

thegreenone said:

I would email the photo and explanation to the Local Authority Building control office for advice.  It may worsen your relations with next door but, as above, that amount of water will cause problems.  

I wouldn't be worried about that, to me its a bit late for that given that it looks like a deliberate act of sabotage. If it wasn't going to drain over the OP's roof, presumably it would be draining onto his neighbours and we know which the neighbour would prefer. He should not have messed around with it in the first place.

Yes, relations couldn’t be made worse. And I think it’s more a case of complete ignorance & a belief that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants.