I'm pissed!

ben62670

When I got back from CT there were two rivers running through the backyard. A main water line had broke at my neighbors house. So now there is a nice path for his front yard to drain off into my backyard. I told him about the damage the water had done to my property. He is usually pretty cool. I was helping him with his water line after I just got home from spending 19hrs on the road with no sleep. I asked him to take a look at it a couple times, and he has never shown. The friggen water coming from his yard is now loading my pool up with clay. I am real friggen pissed. He knows my back if f*cked up, and I can't shovel all this crap. Now my pool is filling up with friggen clay. I hate to have a neighbor that is not friends. I never have problems getting along with people, but this is BS. He needs to fix his crap before he destroys my whole back yard. I had it all prepared for new grass this fall, and now I can't friggen fix it. And why should I have to fix what he is responable for. I take a crap I wipe my own ****.

bsoko2

ben62670 wrote: »

When I got back from CT there were two rivers running through the backyard. A main water line had broke at my neighbors house. So now there is a nice path for his front yard to drain off into my backyard. I told him about the damage the water had done to my property. He is usually pretty cool. I was helping him with his water line after I just got home from spending 19hrs on the road with no sleep. I asked him to take a look at it a couple times, and he has never shown. The friggen water coming from his yard is now loading my pool up with clay. I am real friggen pissed. He knows my back if f*cked up, and I can't shovel all this crap. Now my pool is filling up with friggen clay. I hate to have a neighbor that is not friends. I never have problems getting along with people, but this is BS. He needs to fix his crap before he destroys my whole back yard. I had it all prepared for new grass this fall, and now I can't friggen fix it. And why should I have to fix what he is responable for. I take a crap I wipe my own ****.

It is probably against the law for him to have draining water onto your property. This is the law in most states.

Bill

xj4094dg

What an F'-in drag. This can only suck but he has to fix everything. The bummer is that you have to make him do it whether he wants to or not.
Be firm and very matter-of-fact. His insurance may cover this, or maybe yours who knows.

Good luck.

Rivrrat

Take lots of pictures now, it would be better if your camera has a date stamp.

SolidSqual

Take pictures. Call insurance company. Dont' call a lawyer. Try to settle this neighborly first. Your insurance company should ready to go after his insurance company for the damage.

Retro152

Ben, that is some serious BS. Get the City Engineer over there, or Building Inspector for a looksee. That should get his **** in gear for starters.




Pat.

ben62670

Well I went over there and his dumb 21 yo roommate is there. I told her I am pissed so I don't want to stay, but I told the owner his water is running off his property and loading my pool with dirt. She says well its be raining, and said no $hit that is why all the water is running off his yard into mine. Well I tried to explain it, and told her that he needed to take care of it, and started walking away when I heard her laugh. I said its real Efing funny you dumb ****. I am going to try real hard not to let that pin heads comments effect what I say to him.

jimmydep

Ben
As an Inspector this is unfortunatly a situation we see frequently.....The best advice I can give you is to Calm Down, try to keep the lines of communication open between you and your neighbor. Make another attempt at resolving this without third party intervention. I've seen similar situations go from bad to worse in a heartbeat.

If all elese fails, most Municipalities have ordinances that require homeowners to control the runoff from their property. The first place to start is at your local buiding department. You will most likely have to sign a complaint before they take any action.

I only hope you and your neighbor can work this out and still be freinds in the end. The worst thing is to have a hostile person living next door to you.


Good Luck

Jimmy

ben62670

OK so he comes home. I go over there, and to him what going on. He tells me he is an erosion engineer. I am like I can see water coming of your property onto mine. It never was like this before. I told you again that I was having problems with it. I never had any problems like that till your water main broke. I told him I new the water main broke because I had two EFing rivers running through my back yard. I told him I am tired of shoveling the the friggen dirt that is getting torn from my yard every time it rains. He tells me there is nothing he can do about it. I told him that it is BS he needs to do something about it if the water is running off his property and damaging mine. The guy works for the state so I see this going nowhere with the city. I would have to hire a private engineer to fight this, and still the EFed BS good ol boy society would stick up for him. I hate the crooked south. I wouldn't have this kind of problem up north. So I repeated again that I have always gotten along with him, and I would like it to stay that way, but I can't have my yard getting washed out every time we get a good rain. He said he will take care of the problem on his property. So I said fine. We'll see.

ben62670

jimmydep wrote: »

Ben
As an Inspector this is unfortunatly a situation we see frequently.....The best advice I can give you is to Calm Down, try to keep the lines of communication open between you and your neighbor. Make another attempt at resolving this without third party intervention. I've seen similar situations go from bad to worse in a heartbeat.

If all elese fails, most Municipalities have ordinances that require homeowners to control the runoff from their property. The first place to start is at your local buiding department. You will most likely have to sign a complaint before they take any action.

I only hope you and your neighbor can work this out and still be freinds in the end. The worst thing is to have a hostile person living next door to you.


Good Luck

Jimmy

Thanks Jimmy.
I totally agree, and tried to place emphasis on remaining good neighbors. I have done his lawn without asking. Welcomed him to the neighbor hood. Gave him my number in case I was ever too loud. Told him what kind of work I have done in case he ever needed a hand.
Yes the worst thing would be if he ever had a hostile neighbor.
Again.
Thanks
Ben

ben62670

Well he calls me up and apologizes. He had a bad day, and I wasn't having too much fun shoveling out the dirt out that was running into my pool
(you had to see how bad it was). He took a look at what was going on, and told me that he would take care of it. He is going to have one of his guys come in and put in some drainage. His front yard is a pond every time it rains so it's not good for him either. He offered to come over and help cleanup when it dries out. I told him I apologize for getting so hot, but after his roommate laughed at me I got real pissed.
He got on the phone right after I had left his place, and I don't know if he talked to someone who said he is responsible for the water running of his yard or what, but for now it looks like it is going to work out. I probably needed to get this irate to get the ball rolling. I think he could tell that I did want to remain good neighbors. I am glad this didn't happen when I was younger. I would have been in his face swearing at him and making.. well that stuff never ends up good. Just glad I was swearing about the situation, and not name calling, and going off on him.

SolidSqual

Way to go Ben!

ben62670

Way to go neighbor!
I'm glad it worked out. I couldn't keep digging out every time it rained, and I sure didn't want to lose a friendly neighbor.

NJPOLKER

Ben,
Was that **** hot?
Maybe its not a water main break or the rain. I think I know what the problem is. You should have figured it out yourself and I am disappointed you didn't.
Did you check your bushes? I bet if you do you'll find Russ was in them or maybe still there. Good luck

Fongolio

Hopefully a happy ending. Cool heads and common sense usually win over yelling and baseball bats. But bats can be very satisfying.

ben62670

Yeah Drew she was looking pretty good, but she had that slap me look on her face.

dudeinaroom

ben62670 wrote: »

........I take a crap I wipe my own ****.

Could you teach my middle one how to do this?:D

I-SIG

You think the 18 inches of rain in 12 hours might have had something to with it? My parents and grandparents don't have water in Douglas County thanks to the 500-year flooding.

http://www.wsbtv.com/weather/20925117/detail.html

Check out some of the photo slide shows.

Wes

ben62670

That's not this area. North of Atlanta got hit real hard. We are pretty wet, but nothing we haven't seen before.It is a mess, but ever since the problem with the water main it has been getting progessivly worse.

BIZILL

well been, it ain't over until it's over. hopefully it's over.

ben62670

Yeah I hear ya. I think he will make good. I am going to video if it rains before it get fixed.

jimmydep

Ben
You could put up a temporary silt fence to protect your pool and to help control & contain the mud. They are pretty inexpensive, and you can get them at Home Depot or Lowe's.
This would help until your neighbor has the problem fixed.

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productList&N=4294961544&Ne=4294967294&Ntk=i_products&Ntt=silt+fence



Glad it's all working out

Jimmy

mmadden28

There ya go, Good idea Jimmydep.. Put it up along the border and let all the silt build up on his side-then he'll have even more incentive to fix it. Actually I'm surprised that if he's an erosion eng. that he didn't suggest the same temp solution.

ben62670

Thats a good Idea. I wish I had one before the rain. It would have been nice to catch all the dirt just inside my yard coming from his:)

I hope BillBillw didn't drown. I was watching the news and it flooded real bad over there.

I'm going to give my neighbor a call and see if he can get a piece of silt fence from work. My car is still apart:(


Edit: Yesterday was not the first day I had this problem. Anytime it rained I had the problem. This time it was real bad. His yard is up hill, and it runs down hill real hard.

apphd

ben62670 wrote: »

........Edit: ...... This time it was real bad. His yard is up hill, and it runs down hill real hard.

Water has a tendency to do that.:eek:


jk Dealing with issues with neighbors is always such a pain. Trying to get things resolved, while at the same time preserving a neighborly status isn't the easiest thing to do.
Hope you're able to do both, as what you're dealing with is definitely unacceptable.

We went through one of those 500 year floods about 4 years ago. No personal property damage, other than having to spend the night in my truck as all roads home from work were under water. Totally amazed at the devastation far from the river basin.
Hope the best for those to your north.

inspiredsports

I told my wife if it ever starts flooding here, all of the electronics gear on the lower level is going into the boat first. I'll come back for her and the 4 kids on the second trip

ben62670

Well The neighbor put up a silt fence today. Where he put it is on the top of the hill, but not far enough up. I know it will slow the water down, but won't stop it. I hope it is enough to slow the water to prevent major washout. There was a guy there helping him from work. The guy is also his roommates father:( Between the two of the experts they can't figure out how the water is making it down to my property:rolleyes: I do have a very small amount of understanding of why they don't see it. The woods are about 30' wide between us, and very step. The ground cover from the woods is tied together and the water runs under the ground cover. Last night while walking on it you could feel the ground cover floating and swelled up. When it gets to the bottom of the hill all the water from up above comes together again. He told me his plans on how he wants to fix it. It is not going to work, and yet he is going to spend the time and money to install a drain and pipe it a little further down his property. I am so disgusted by the lack of quaility workmanship down here. That little drain idea may help for a little while, but it is most likely going to end up getting plugged. What he really needs is some 4" minimum drain pipe with the holes in it. The pipe needs to be laid in a bed of trap rock, and we would be fine. He doesn't want to drain the dip that is located right near his front door. If we have any serious rain he will have issues with water seeping into his walls, and into his house.
I just don't get it. It isn't rocket science. Water is control by two things. Gravity, and resistance. That's it.
It just leaves me shaking my head.