What is this part of my house?!

[sanpelle]

I posted about this a while back but no one seemed to know any answer to my questions. I'm so confused! I'm living in a mid terrace private rent with a 3rd level bedroom that has half of the room cut off. So it doesn't extend to the full length of the house. There is a thin hollow wall blocking the rest of the 3rd level. I've never experienced anything like it. All the neighbours have bedrooms that extend to the length of the house (seen in rental listings pics).

There is no access to it anywhere for me and I'm just bemused at why anyone would have a large section of their house blocked off so they can't maintain it. I could hear workmen behind the wall when my neighbours had their roof done and I'm not sure why they would be in my house. I've never heard anything else. Do my neighbours own part of my house? I just don't understand and my LL isn't easy to contact.

If anyone needed to access that area from inside my house then the walls would have to be knocked through. It just doesn't seem practical if there's pipes or such behind there that might need maintaining. Might be the reason behind all the damp in the house though! Maybe it's just a room full of pipes and mould, my LL has been known to cut a few corners. There's no insulation in the house at all so can't be that! I'm so puzzled

Can you get in the loft?

Sorry I've not explained it well enough! It's a 3 storey town house so the 3rd floor is a bedroom and there's no loft. Most of the other neighbours have en-suites where my room cuts off and the rest have large bedrooms. I feel like my LL is trying to hide something or just couldn't afford to do it all up. As far as I'm aware he refurbished it when he bought it 8 years ago and it's not changed since then but I'm struggling to find any pictures of what it was like originally

Could be that the roof slopes there and rather than have it plastered in an odd shape he stuck a wall up and blocked off the angled section?

Are your neighbours related to your landlord? My gusss would be that the LL has given permission to your neighbours to use your houses loft space as their own.

It's where the bodies are stored.

I would be so tempted to drill a hole 'to hang a picture' and then poke a camera through or use my phone

Do you have floor plans for their houses? Are they exactly the same roof pitch etc?

Do you have a diagram?

Just checked google earth and all the roofs look the same. There's definitely space behind there but I'll probably never find out it's such a mystery!

Well this is the beginning of a horror story

Sorry op
I realise you live there I'm only joking don't be scared

Does your landlord own the house next door? It sounds ridiculous but could he have used some of your bedroom to extend the one next door? Do you talk to the neighbours - the ones who had the builders?

Does he own an adjoining house?

What's the wall made of?

Do you know the neighbours well enough to ask them if you can measure their rooms?

So your bedroom is in the roofspace? Surely it's just the bot where the roof slopes down to meet the wall and is not high enough to use.

Is it a loft extension in an older house? Weird not to be using all the space, but lofts are often shared in older houses. A pp might be right about the rest of the space being used for the house next door.

Is there any way to track down the square footage of your house as well as the neighbour-in-question's? If the houses are supposed to be identical it would be interesting to see if the square footage is the same.

Maybe a previous owner or your LL didn't want the expense/bother of 'finishing' the whole room (plaster/sheet rock etc) so they just finished part of it and figured that was a big enough room?

I wouldn't be able to stand it. I'd do as a PP said and drill a hole and have a look-see. Easier enough (usually!) to patch and paint.

It really creeps me out, tried my best with the diagram on my phone. The neighbour to the left has the same set up as the one on the diagram. The bottom line the diagram is the front of the houses so the strange gap is at the back of my house if any of this makes sense😂 It's been boggling my mind for the 2 years I've been here

If you Google the address are there any old photos from estate agents that would show how the room used to be?

Maybe there was a fire in the wall and rather than repair he just created a new cosmetic wall?

There must be a secret door!

I'm in a town house, with bedroom and ES just as you describe, so it sounds incredibly creepy regarding this "dead space"......

How many feet are missing? Your diagram looks like more than 10 - is that right??

Header tanks for cold water maybe, although they would have access and doing this from 'next door' would be peculiar unless all the top rooms are just stud walls (timber frame with plasterboard).

I think it's likely my LL got lazy/tight and decided to just do half of the room. I like to think that if the neighbours had access and were using that space then it would have been disclosed to me at some point. It's a weird thing to hide but some people can be dodgy I suppose! I'll definitely come back and update if I ever find out the true reason. I'll ask my LL whenever he next decides to do an inspection

Are you through an agency? Give them a call and ask. Or text the landlord. We need to know OP!

Not likely to be header tanks as they would probably not be high enough for neighbour's ensuite unless it is just for your water but it is a big waste of space.

Is there a window on the creepy side of the third floor?

I suspect all the properties in your terrace were originally just a bedroom on the second floor with the eaves cut off with a small partition at either end where the slope of the roof comes down and meets the top of the external wall. Basically boxing in the dead space. Over time people have probably took space off the bedroom to form an en-suite.

There's definitely pipes attached to the wall behind there as there are circles of damp that show where they're attached. Is that just the water systems? This is making me figure some weird things out now! I've been having suspicions that the neighbour on the diagram could be using my water supply as every time they turn a tap on or use the shower my pipes and boiler make a noise. It might just be a coincidence but if they've got access they can easily mess with things surely? They've been here 5 years longer than my LL has owned the house so maybe even he doesn't know about it. I'm not sure how much he renovated it. I wish I could find old listing pictures!