I probably shouldn’t post this on here, but need to get it off my chest, and am genuinely interested if other people have experienced anything similar.
Builders started work next door to us 6 months ago. Their task was to triple the size of a modest semi by building substantial side and rear extensions. The story goes back 7 years with multiple planning applications that my neighbours and I have fought against, ultimately to no avail.
Due to the way both houses were constructed, the builders needed access to my garden to sort out issues with drains, access which I freely gave. This involved them drilling up part of my rear patio and laying new drains. So far so good, but it took them over a month to fill in the holes and re-lay the slabs on my patio, and when they did the work my slabs had mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by some that were salvaged from the neighbouring garden. They didn’t match, but at least the holes were filled in, so I didn’t make a fuss.
In January work started inside to join the old part of the house to the new. This involved demolition of internal and external walls, and masonry drilling that was sometimes so unbearable that I had to go out for days at a time, and my wife was unable to work from home. This went on until the end of February. The house owner then decided he wanted to render the external walls, a process that took place in fits and starts and resulted in clouds of cement dust covering my garden and seeping in to every part of my house alongside the brick dust that was already there. When windows and doors were finally installed to seal the open cavities it was too late to prevent the black mould and damp that had already started to form on the adjacent walls of my house. The constant masonry drilling into the party wall – none of which had been notified to me in the correct manner – has resulted in cracks to the plaster on my side of the wall, and will require complete redecoration.
Last (or possibly latest) is demolition of the brick garden wall that divides our two properties. The wall was unsafe, and will be rebuilt, but the digger driver who undertook the work managed to demolish a brick pillar that forms part of my own garden wall in the process. Cue an effing and jeffing slanging match with the builders which I am not proud of, and the digger driver swinging the scoop of his digger ominously in my direction.
It seems that the law gives little in the way of rights to people affected by the building work undertaken by neighbours, and I know there are cases which are much more horrendous than my own, so perhaps I should be grateful that things have not been much worse. I’m not in the best of health at the moment, and I do feel that the last 6 months of daily disturbance have not been kind to my state of mind either. I’d be interested to know how others have coped with similar situations.
Unfortunately I don’t have a large garden gnome to insert in Mr O’Reilly.
fentonsteve says
My first thought is: is there any form of compensation you could pursue?
It sounds like your neighbours are inconsiderate (to put it mildly) and have employed cowboys.
I’ve been having my garage converted – all work is internal. What was supposed to take 4-5 weeks is now on month 5 due to material shortages, Covid, etc. The Plasterer was due to start today, but the Plasterer’s Mate tested Covid positive last week so he’s running 3 or 4 days late.
At the request of the builder (who wasn’t available after all), I paid a local architect to do some proper drawings. They turned out to be useless. Luckily I’ve been WFH and every time there’s a question, I can pop out and make the decision. That has occupied all of my spare brain power for 5 months, on top of holding down a full-time job.
I have two off-road parking spaces in front of the garage, but there’s a skip in one, and Mrs F’s car in the other. My car is parked on a grass verge (part of my property, but the verge has become a bit of a mud bath over the winter.)
My poor opposite neighbours have had to look at a huge yellow skip out of their living room window, a situation only slightly improved by various trades vans blocking their view during the working day.
At the end of all this, I’m going over the road with a case of red and a case of white. They can have both. And that’s before I set the drum kit up in the (by then, soundproofed) garage.
Perhaps I was just brought up proper.
Boneshaker says
I feel your pain Steve. The cases of wine are a nice touch – I could do with them right now.
Baron Harkonnen says
You definitely were brought up proper Steve. If only all neighbours were as thoughtful.
Yours definitely are not Shaker Of Bones, twats comes to mind but I don’t swear anymore. Whether you have the law on your side is doubtful and if you did legal action would probably cost more than it’s worth. Others on this forum can give you much better advice than I can. I really feel for you and your wife, things like this make my……I think you get my drift. Good luck.
Boneshaker says
Thanks Baron, I made recordings of the drilling noise which I played back to a woman from Environmental Health at the local council. Basically, builders can make as much noise as they like as long as they do it within conventional building hours.
bobness says
But surely they can’t damage your property with impunity, as long as it’s in normal business hours. The plaster cracking and wall destroying alone should surely be paid for?
Boneshaker says
They have at least apologised for knocking down the wall and will make good at their own expense, but it’s the carelessness, inconvenience and worry that I really resent.
johnw says
I’m not suggesting that cowboy building is still the norm but it appears that there are still too many who take that attitude that their needs trump anyone else’s and they’ll try and get the job done in the way that inconveniences them the least. Normally they get away with it so win. When they don’t get away with it, they put stuff right with usually very little fuss with absolutely no notion of the amount of stress they’ve caused because of their inconsiderate attitude. It’s a numbers game.
Boneshaker says
Spot on, sadly.
Mike_H says
Yes. Unfortunately you have no recourse unless they make noise before 8a.m. or after about 6:30 p.m. Or any time on Sunday.
Damage of any kind to your property is a different matter. You should insist it’s made good PROPERLY. Bodge-ups are not acceptable. Take photos of any damage caused to your property and what they have done to remedy it and keep them safe.
The thing to do, but it’s too late now in your case, is to establish ground rules beforehand in return for your co-operation over access etc.
As regards planning applications for work on a property, near neighbours can sometimes get restrictions on when noisy works are done written into the consent conditions.
Vulpes Vulpes says
You could always take John Simpson’s practical advice: To one wine bottle add a finger of acetone, and a good slop of motor oil. Fill the rest with petrol and stuff an old chamois into the neck and bind it in place with wire. Up end the thing and get the exposed chamois good and wet. Light with a match and lob through next door’s window. Best wait until the interior redecoration is fully complete, of course.
Seriously though, I am confused about why you granted such free access to your own property in the first place; surely they had no right to any such thing? I’m not sure how planning could have been granted if the building work required could only go ahead if access was given to somebody else’s (i.e. your) private property?
Boneshaker says
Sadly, the law says you have to grant reasonable access to builders who need access to your land to carry out work to a neighbouring property. I’m no expert on this, but I did my homework with the Party Wall Act beforehand. To be fair, the only access they have needed was for drainage work; the rest of the mayhem is just through sheer incompetence and carelessness.
TrypF says
I feel your pain. My upstairs neighbour is, like most people round my way (apart from me cos I’m poor) having a massive loft extension which has necessitated scaffolding front and back, all kinds of crap falling into the gardens, noise (which could be worse but makes WFH a bitch). Oh, and they’re over a month overdue. I bet she doesn’t even get us a box of mint Matchmakers.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Have a word with your local drama group and borrow a lifelike mannequin, put it in the garden under a couple of scaffolding poles, drench it in fake claret and post a photo on Twatter with the builder’s van visible in the background.
Uncle Wheaty says
Why do builders assume we all work to their strange hours? Especially if you have kids to get to school.
Please don’t turn up at 7.30- 8am and leave at 3.30-4pm!!!!!
Arrive at 9am and leave at 5pm like normal people!
davebigpicture says
In That London, they do it to avoid the traffic and bag the limited parking.
johnw says
I’m the opposite, I’d rather they started as early as possible and got out of my way as soon as possible. This should normally be our decision, not theirs. I don’t think starting at 7:30 is strange though, I reckon by 7:30 at least 50% of our office is in and working..
Uncle Wheaty says
What industry do you work in when half the staff are in at 7.30am.?
I assume they don’t have kids.
Moose the Mooche says
Builders always have kids – they never live with them though.
Other stereotypes are available.
davebigpicture says
According to a checkout assistant at my local Tesco, they always have huge wads of cash.
Moose the Mooche says
… which the CSA and the tax man don’t know about. And absolutely all the sex you could ever possibly want.
People still parrot nonsense about those without university educations being the losers in life.
Boneshaker says
Builder stereotypes #456 – THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO SHOUT WHEN THEY ARE ON SITE.
fentonsteve says
YES, MATE. IT’S HARD TO HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE OF THE RADIO TUNED TO TALKSPORT, INNIT.
Where do builders buy those radios that sound like an angry wasp in a jam jar? Is is the same place where market traders buy theirs? Is there a special shop?
P.S. My Chippy is a 6Music man. We have a little dance every time Ibibio Sound Machine comes on.
davebigpicture says
Have fish & chips often?
johnw says
The age range in our office is roughly 20->70. If someone, through their working life, has two children roughly two years apart, school hours will only be relevant to them for about a 20 year period … and that’s a maximum. That means that, at any time, only about 40% of the office will have children under 18.
To answer more directly the question, the office is mainly engineers and it’s more than 90% male, we mainly commute a distance by car and treat the ability to start from 6:30 as a fine way to dodge the traffic!
dai says
We had renovations in our office last year. They generally worked 7 until 3 so I guess these types of hours are universal
Paul Wad says
I’d be happy if I never have to see another builder ever again. I got totally scammed a few months ago by a cowboy who took advantage of the lack of builders available. He did a bit of work, dampproofing and panelling my outhouse and whatnot, but basically just pushed me into paying him in full before he completed and then the work just stopped and he cut off all contact. What’s more, the work he has done is amateurish and rubbish and all needs ripping out. I put a claim in against him and the courts have found in my favour and ordered him to pay me the money back, but he’s moved house and I don’t know where he is.
As the claim is for over £5,000, which seems to be the cut off point for various methods of trying to get the money out of him, I don’t really know what to do next. I imagine he’ll have hidden his money anyway and will plead poverty. I know he’s bought his wife a nice car, but I guess that will be in her name and can’t be touched. It’s all been very stressful and now I’m left with the work still needing to be done, but no money left with which to do it. My job tomorrow is to try to work out what steps I should take next. It’s all very annoying and thoroughly depressing. It seems that ripping people off and defrauding people is no longer a crime, as the police didn’t want to know..
Fingers crossed you get your situation sorted out, as I can imagine the stress it’s giving you.
Boneshaker says
Jeez, Paul, that’s an horrendous situation to be in. I confess to knowing very little about how to deal with things like this, but is it not possible to involve the sherriff’s office to enforce payment of your claim?
On a separate building issue, I have approached a builder to do some work for me. I’ve used him before so had thought he was reliable. We discussed the work and he seemed happy to cost it up and give me a quote. I’ve had to chase him twice for the quote, which he has promised to phone me with ‘later on today’ on both occasions, then nothing. If he doesn’t want the work I’d rather he just said so, rather than leaving me guessing and delaying me approaching someone else. Everything to do with builders is a stressful minefield. I too would be happy to never see another.
Best of luck resolving your problem.
fentonsteve says
Builders are just incredibly busy and have a year’s worth of catch up to do. I chose (to wait for) the builder who worked on our friend’s house (to become available) to work on my garage. He came round to quote in May 2020. I gave him monthly reminders for a quote, but prices and lead times of materials went bonkers after lockdown. At one point, timber was 3 times its pre-Brexit/pre-Covid price and there was a two-week wait for a bag of sand.
Anyhow, in August 2021 he admitted defeat – too busy – and gave me his carpenter’s details. He would be available to start in late September, but actually arrived mid-December. He then went away to finish his previous job (material delays) for “two weeks”, which became five weeks. He spent a whole day driving backwards and forwards to Milton Keynes (45 mins each way) to get material from there as Travis Perkins didn’t have a lorry driver to get it transferred to our local depot (20 mins away) or a driver to deliver it.
Lovely people, both, but demand has overtaken supply. I’m not the only person converting their garage to a WFH office, but I am the only one having it soundproofed.
Brace yourself for when the quote does finally arrive – ours was double what we’d budgeted for in pre-Brexit times. In the years since, luckily, I’d saved more than the quote had increased by.
So, Bones, if you know a good builder, keep him on your side (and budget for more than you had previously thought) and be patient.
And, Paul, that’s just… shit. You have enough to deal with, without scum like that.
Paul Wad says
The worst thing about it is that after he and his “team” had been here a few days and seemed to be cracking on quickly (they started with the painting, as that was easy peasy) my niece, who had just bought her first house with her boyfriend, was let down by a plasterer and urgently needed some plastering doing, as she had other work booked in. I spoke with the guy doing my house and sent him up there to do it. He then convinced her to let him do all the outstanding work…you can see where I’m going here, can’t you!
So she too has ended up putting a claim in for £4k. He went one step further with her, by texting her a photo of a bathroom and listing all the things he’d done to make that bathroom look so amazing, trying to get another few thousand out of her. But her dad (my brother-in-law) did a Google search of the image and found he’d just taken it from a website. Even armed with this the police didn’t want to know.
Around that time a guy that was helping him and was apparently a ‘top joiner’ told my niece in a sudden burst of honesty that this builder was a scam artist with no experience and was actually a delivery driver for a Chinese takeaway. He said he had done this to around a dozen people and that he had had to go round sorting everything out for him. My brother-in-law said this bloke’s joinery work wasn’t up to much either and it turned out it was the same bloke the builder had brought to my house as a ‘top plasterer’ and who had made a pig’s ear of the plastering. A bit of investigation and it turns out he is actually a coach driver!
It’s all been a bit crap, but fortunately that’s now water off a duck’s back for me, as it’s just been one thing after another (for example, the week before last I managed to get myself referred to at least 3, maybe 5, new Specialists in less than 24 hours – a record even for me!). The only things that really get to me is watching my football team constantly throwing leads away in the dying minutes, in our bid for relegation.
It would be nice to get something back from this bloke though, then at least I can afford to get the outhouse patched up and the windowsill he put in the bathroom replaced (honestly, you should see the state of the thing he put in!), but I’m not really expecting it. As a member of the Labour Party I do intend to arrange to see the local MP, who’s also currently the South Yorkshire Mayor to ask why the SY police are not prepared to investigate this matter (after a representative on their website’s Live Chat told me to submit it for investigation) when the West Yorkshire police have appealed for victims to come forward so they can investigate, but also so that he can tell his fellow MPs on the other side of the floor that fraud very much does exist, no matter what they might say.
Mike_H says
It’s near-impossible to accurately quote a price for building work, when material costs and availability are so volatile. And get ready for another hike in prices for building work as the legal use of duty-free “red” diesel is restricted to just farmers and fishermen.