Oblivious neighbour

[SewingMum46]

Our neighbour has lived in her house about 20 years, we've been in ours about 10. It's a terrace so we're very aware of noise, parking etc. We get on well - we look after her house and cats when she's away, she looks after our house. But we don't interact very much. She is very quiet, lives alone but has a boyfriend who visits every few months. We each have a tiny courtyard (about 2m x 2m) at the back of our houses, but because of the way the houses were built our courtyard is against the back wall of her house. So our courtyard is right against the legal boundary. It's tiny but it's our only outside space, we have a table and a couple of chairs out there, lots of herbs in a window box, and when it's warm enough I hang washing out to dry.

She's been having a lot of work done on her house for the last four months. We've been as helpful as we can by making sure builders can park outside her house and offering her a quiet place to come to when it's been really noisy for her. However in the first few weeks I came home from work to find a new boiler flue had been put in directly above our courtyard. The courtyard was full of the debris from making the hole. I wasn't sure it was legal so checked with building control and confirmed it wasn't permitted as it vented over our property. Spoke to her and she asked me to get the builders to move it. They weren't very happy but they did so and we agreed that the hole in the wall could have an extractor fan venting out of it. However although she saw all the mess in our courtyard she didn't apologise for it. She has however several times apologised for the noise.

The day before yesterday her builders turned up to ask if they could run a white plastic waste pipe through the wall between our courtyards into her soil stack which is actually in our courtyard. It would have gone directly behind where we have one of our chairs. I said no and they couldn't understand why, fortunately I then pointed out that the soil stack is an asbestos one and they immediately said they wouldn't touch it so that was sorted. The reason for the pipe apparently was so they wouldn't have to cut down into concrete in her courtyard. So yesterday I was at home, heard noise and when I went out to check they had started cutting. Dust everywhere, all over the table and chairs, herbs etc. I asked them to stop so I could move stuff but I think they thought I was being a bit fussy.

I'm a bit annoyed - I think she could have spoken to us herself before they started making mess on both occasions. I'm having to clean up after her renovation, and I don't mind so much but it would have been nice to have a bit of warning. I get the impression that she thought I was unreasonable to ask for the boiler flue to be moved, and the builders seemed taken aback that I said no to the white plastic waste pipe in our courtyard.

Opinions anyone?

It wasn't just that it would look horrible, it would have been constantly getting knocked when we moved chairs which would be less than ideal.

That sounds awful OP - I'd hate to have a plastic pipe running through my lovely courtyard. You did the right thing by putting your foot down in my opinion.

Why so unpleasant bluntness I'm sure a good proportion of us would be pissed off if this was happening in our only outside space

I don’t blame you for being pissed off about any of this OP. Don’t think your neighbour has handled herself at all well.

‘Miserable little space’ might become my new username.

Wow @bluntness100

Do you have problems with reading comprehension? The flue was installed illegally so it had to be removed. Why do you feel the need to be unnecessarily coarse and vulgar in order to hammer home your ill conceived and pointless opinion? Get a grip.

@SewingMum46

Of COURSE YANBU, and ignore any poster saying you are.

I would say no. If I had such a tiny space in my yard/garden, then fuck it, I would be saying no, especially as the woman cannot be arsed to acknowledge you most of the time. Why should you do what you don't want to do for the sake of neighbour harmony ....? SHE doesn't care about YOU or the neighbour harmony with YOU.

The last house we lived at, there was a woman (in the next cul-de-sac to us,) whose fence ran parallel to the bottom of our 42 foot long garden, and she only ever spoke to us when she wanted to bitch about our fir trees (blocking her light!)

Her garden was 50 foot long, so our trees didn't block her light much anyway, as the trees never exceeded 10 feet in height! But what irked me more than anything, was that in ten years at that property, she never spoke to us for ANY reason other than moaning about the fir trees!..

Bitch.

Falling out with your neighbours who live at the end of 2 40 foot gardens is different from falling out with the neighbour you share a party wall with, whose front door is presumably pretty close to your own. Unless you're the type of person who can blithely ignore ill feeling it is thoroughly, thoroughly horrible. I know from experience. Of course you should stick up for yourself but it's never as simple as who's right/wrong when you live cheek to cheek like that.

Builders are often not conversant with our building standards and our practices. You need to make the building regulations aware at your local council and show them some photos of what the situation is.

Yes Simkin, it's very awkward, especially as we have a good, if not close, relationship.

Bit of an update though. I did wonder why, when there was already a drain existing in the kitchen which goes out of the window wall and into ndn's courtyard, they would need to put a new pipe through into the soil stack. The kitchen drain is much closer.... have now found out she's had a new downstairs loo put in... can only assume that was the reason for the pipe and it wasn't just going to be waste water from the kitchen going through it!