Exceptionally long sorry, trying to give the details without writing too much so if more info needed please ask!
I have a mid terrace cottage.
My new neighbour (also mid terrace) advised me there were going to be some building works as she was going to take down the porch type stucture between her and neighbour on the other side and put in a brick wall and raise the roof to same high as her extension out the back. She told me she'd had some issues with the other neighbour (they have half the porch each and obviously she needed to sort out taking down the wall, fixing roof etc with them) but this was now sorted and work was going ahead.
Fine I thought, apart from the builders in the garden and noise etc it shouldn't affect me.
But it's not panning out like that...
I too have an extension. Her extension and mine both extend to the same length and have a roof that is joined. The bricks wall between us though appears to be separate in that her extension has its own wall as does mine. There is a very small gap between the two and I would guess they were built at different times.
But the flat roof is not separate, although looks like it was not built as one roof it is joined in the middle.
Anyhow. Yesterday I was rather concerned to see that all the bricks on the back of her extension had been removed leaving the breeze blocks behind visable. At first I thought they had removed some of the bricks on my wall (there was an obvious gap), but on closer inspection it must be an insulation gap or something between her breeze blacks and the brick wall that is her separate wall. And I can see that they have started putting in replacement bricks of the same kind they have replaced the porch wall with. So I assumed she was replacing them so her brick work all matches and not about to take the whole wall down.
The builders do start early, but this morning we woke up to a horrendous racket. My extension wall was vibrating even and my ds was rather frightened by the noise and refused to go in the kitchen for breakfast.
So I went out and asked (possibly rather brusquely) if the could stop the noise for as my ds was a bit scared of it and I needed him to have breakfast and get to school. They said ok. I said should only be about 10 mins and went back indoors. I got his breakfast on table, jumped in shower and told him to go out and tell them when he was done.
But when he did there was no sign of the builders out the back and no sign of them out the front. He went off to school, I went off to work about half hour later, no sign of builders still.
Got home from work and looks like they've not been there all day. Rather worried that my neighbour is going to be angry that I made the builders go away (but it wasn't like that at all. So knocked on her door but no answer so haven't seen her yet).
Anyhow to cut a long story short. On going out the back to see if she was in the garden I had a really good look at the situation (best I could peering over the fence).
I am rather worried about what they were actually doing. When I went out he seemed to have some kind of electric chisel type thing for getting bricks out (sorry no idea about tools). I really don't know why he had this down the gap between our extensions. He can't possibly replace any bricks he removes from there as my wall is in the way.
There looks to be some kind of insulance board between the buildings too, so I though maybe he was trying to get that out. But why would he need that kind of tool for it?
So my question is does this count as a third party wall, and should they be asking me before they do anything to it. Can i go round and request to know what is going on on the grounds it is a third party wall, or is it not technically third party as there are two separate walls, even if joined by a roof.
Thanks if you got this far and hopefully someone will know as I think it's too late in teh day to ring the CAB!