Author Topic: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.  (Read 19399 times)

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #25 on: 05 May, 2015, 07:29:54 am »
Glad to hear that you're getting there. Can the gate bit be done in a day, while people are about? (or does it take an age to dry?)

Maybe throw in some bedtime reading to take her mind off the worry?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crimewatch-U-K-Nick-Ross/dp/0340405414/

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #26 on: 05 May, 2015, 11:12:04 am »
Maybe these are people who've their minds warped by excessive doses of tabloid scare stories.
Move Faster and Bake Things

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #27 on: 05 May, 2015, 11:26:09 am »
Would it be possible to hang the gate on the other side (their side) to resolve the problem of rendering your wall (and your builder is correct, rendering around the gate is not the best  way to do things if it can be helped).  The gate wouldn't have anything to shut against while the wall was being done, but it should be fairly easy to bodge up something to make it look like it was secure.

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #28 on: 05 May, 2015, 11:33:24 am »
The gate should be hung from/to a post set apart from but adjacent to the wall. Once again would be surprised if the curtilage is exactly on the line of the gable as is often a few inches beyond.
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Wowbagger

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #29 on: 05 May, 2015, 11:37:45 am »
Can the builders not erect a perfectly viable temporary gate out of Heras fencing for the hours of the night?
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Wombat

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #30 on: 05 May, 2015, 01:47:57 pm »
Wot him above sed..  Heras fencing, some bike cable locks, together will all be far more secure than the original gate is.  However, Canardly makes a very good point.  I'm currently engaged in a large external wall insulation project, and gates attached to walls are a right pain in the arse, separate posts are a far better thing.  Also less likely to bring abotu unwanted vibratino and noice during use, through your wall. Your neighbour is truly being cataclysmically silly.
Wombat

Aunt Maud

  • Le Flâneur.
Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #31 on: 05 May, 2015, 03:42:44 pm »
Glad to hear that you're getting there. Can the gate bit be done in a day, while people are about? (or does it take an age to dry?)

Maybe throw in some bedtime reading to take her mind off the worry?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crimewatch-U-K-Nick-Ross/dp/0340405414/

Building lime comes in three types Lime Putty (In a bucket with water), Hydraulic (powder in a bag, different strengths) and Hydrated. The first two have two types of set and Hydrated won't set by itself and needs cement and is used for cement based mortars to increase their workability.

The initial set is where it stiffens up but you can re-mix again it to increase its workability and its final set is when it carbonates and becomes hard and durable.

The rate of initial set depends on how dry the substrate is (brickwork in this case, I would imagine). The final set/carbonation will take about 30 days before the render reaches its full strength and in the case of lime putty, that's not a very high crushing strength compared to a Hydraulic lime based mortar.

The plasterers will make use of the initial set, as the render should be applied in at least two coats, a scratch coat, which is scratched when soft to provide a key for a final coat which is smooth and flat, but not like plaster smooth. Then they will have to wait some time......a week or so before they can lime wash the render with 2-3 coats of lime putty mixed with water, like paint. Once the lime wash is on they should re-hang the gate.

They will have to keep spraying the render with water and protect it if it's really warm, windy or pouring with rain until it's hard enough to take the lime wash without brush marks in the render. If they don't damp it down it'll shrink and crack like anything and you don't want that in the final coat, although the lime wash will fill any fine hairline cracks ok.

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #32 on: 05 May, 2015, 09:15:06 pm »
The scaffold is now up. Rob said she was perfectly happy with it when he went to see her afterwards. Maybe because she's realised it doesn't go as far back as she thought it did and is actually only adjacent to a blank gable wall as far as she's concerned, which even the burglars will find it difficult to penetrate (we're not re-rendering our modern extension, only the original Victorian bit), maybe because she's partaken in the booze we donated, who knows... Apparently the scaffolders were a bit cross at not being able to use her house to brace the scaffolding, but managed nonetheless.

What Aunt Maud has said ties in with the timescales that he's given me (he's set out very clearly each stage, and he needs time between each stage, including time for the bricks underneath to dry out if they're wet, which they probably will be as rain has been getting into the old, cracked concrete render and unable to get out again). It's apparently going to piss it down tomorrow when the render is due to come off so that'll go well  ::-)

Might try to broach subject of gate again tomorrow, maybe when render company bloke is here to reassure her as to what kind of securing job he's going to do in the interim. We're actually much more at risk as we've got a much larger pair of double gates at the side that need to come off, but he assures me he deals with this kind of thing all the time.

So the gate cannot be done in a day, it would need to be off for a while to allow the render to cure.

We didn't mind the gate being attached to our house before now, they rarely use it so we never heard it, and a couple of months ago she was proudly telling me of her burglar deterrent (she's got a load of thorny debris/dirt piled up against it so that if a burglar does jump over the gate he'll get a nasty shock, I suspect half her problem was the fact that she had to move that to allow our scaffolders access...)

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #33 on: 06 May, 2015, 10:30:36 am »
The render is coming off. Rob has just texted me that layer of pebbledash has been discovered under the concrete render. Lovely.

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #34 on: 06 May, 2015, 01:48:07 pm »
Oh lovely... Well at least you are confident that the job needed doing, and the wall be now be better protected!  Pebbledash - uurgh!
Wombat

Otto

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #35 on: 06 May, 2015, 02:38:25 pm »
Oh lovely... Well at least you are confident that the job needed doing, and the wall be now be better protected!  Pebbledash - uurgh!

My house is pebble dashed.. I'm just dreading when I need to take it off

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #36 on: 10 May, 2015, 06:16:41 pm »
Bloody hell this hassle is never ending.

Came home the other night to find they'd managed to damage the toilet soil pipe and now it was splashing loo contents over the patio every time someone flushed it. Phoned the guy and he sent a plumber round straight away to fix it, sounding very unimpressed that he'd not been informed of it.

Went out today (zomg we were naughty and left the house unattended except for the dog, please no one tell the neighbour) and when we came back one of the neighbours further along was outside and asked what works we were doing and we explained it was necessary works to stop damp.

Chatted for a bit and then he pointed to his BMW and said that the dusty works weren't making us very popular (pointing to a fine coating of dust on his car, bearing in mind we live in Croydon which is pretty filthy and any number of building works going on at any one time) and that he'd asked the builders to give him a tenner to get his car washed, and if they wouldn't give it to him next week he was going to ask us for it. We just laughed in a 'ha ha, imagine that!' kind of way, and I said to be honest he didn't have to worry about many more building works happending in the near future because we didn't have any spare money left after paying for this work and were probably going to eat beans on toast for a while to pay off our debts. Which is not far from the truth. Ie, don't hold your breath for your tenner, mate.

People are so fucking ridiculous about their bastard cars. Cheeky little sod. It'll probably rain soon, that'll sort his precious car.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #37 on: 10 May, 2015, 06:36:08 pm »
My motor-car seems always to be covered with a fine film of dust, whether parked close to the building works over the road or quarter of a mile down the side road, therefore BMW man is a sillybollocks.  Set his car/him on fire.
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Feanor

  • It's mostly downhill from here.
Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #38 on: 10 May, 2015, 06:38:02 pm »
What a tosspot.

If you take your car out of your private enclosed storage space into public space, you have to accept that it's going to be subject to all the dirt that implies.

Road grime, seagull shit, dust from building works, you name it.

If he doesn't want a dirty car, tell him to keep it in his private enclosed storage space.

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #39 on: 10 May, 2015, 07:05:01 pm »
Next-door but one to us has a woodburner. He burns all sorts of crap wood in it that frequently leave a fine coating over the entire cul-de-sac's vehicles. This is the same twunt who complained that the kids in the close's chalk drawings on the road were vandalism.
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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #40 on: 10 May, 2015, 07:08:55 pm »
Tell the twunt to move to Rugby.   Every day he can wipe the fine dust from Rugby Cement Works from his precious twatmobile.   I'd like to see how he fares asking Rugby Cement for a tenner to wash his car. 

ian

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #41 on: 10 May, 2015, 08:12:08 pm »
Building works will never make you popular. Mess, noisy machinery, huge deliveries, vans blocking the road... Try doing it all when you live on a narrow 25% hill*. For matters like the gate, just get it done, your neighbour has no reasonable cause for complaint. And remind her that your house looking nice makes her house worth more.

Our neighbour is mostly fine (we have a similar setup with a wall only accessible via her property). Our only gripe are a couple of self-set sycamores and a hazel that grow in the gap which really need to come out (they'll just overgrow our house, the roots are a level below and will eventually damage her property rather than ours, everything is terraced owing the hill). She keeps agreeing to get it done, but this is year 2 of her conspicuously not getting it done. I figure I'll just offer to pay. Mildly annoying as it would have been easier before the leaves came.

As for the dirty car, 'fuck off' is I think is the only reasonable response. Our car is parked under cover and rarely used and it's still covered with dust within two weeks. That might be our neighbour's wood stove, she burns anything too (can't complain, I pass plenty of it over the fence). I'm not bothered, cars get dirty.

*for bonus points, have you removals pantechnicon block the hill at about 5.30pm on a weekday and create your own traffic jam. Most people were OK about it, the movers were helping people squeeze their cars by, but there was one idiot – BMW natch – who came banging on the door demanding that I have them move the lorry because they were 'blocking his right of way'. He was ready for a right barney. Bad fight to pick mind, considering I standing there with no fewer than eight blokes who lift furniture for a living.

ian

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #42 on: 11 May, 2015, 09:23:21 am »
Edit: render. Who's idea was that? Let's go back in time and put a stop to the very idea. What's wrong with bricks/ And what kind of idiot buys a house that's part rendered and part wood-clad. Oh.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #43 on: 11 May, 2015, 09:34:50 am »
And what kind of idiot buys a house that's part rendered and part wood-clad. Oh.

A USAnian, he said, charitably?
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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #44 on: 11 May, 2015, 09:37:26 am »
If you take your car out of your private enclosed storage space into public space, you have to accept that it's going to be subject to all the dirt that implies.
Precisely.

Edit: render. Who's idea was that? Let's go back in time and put a stop to the very idea. What's wrong with bricks/ And what kind of idiot buys a house that's part rendered and part wood-clad. Oh.
Render is necessary when the bricks are not water-resistant. Rain makes bricks damp, damp freezes in winter, bricks crumble.

Pebbledash or other varieties of render are common next to the sea, where the salt-laden spray has its own wonderful effects on brickwork.
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Tim Hall

  • Victoria is my queen
Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #45 on: 11 May, 2015, 09:50:57 am »
Edit: render. Who's idea was that? Let's go back in time and put a stop to the very idea. What's wrong with bricks/ And what kind of idiot buys a house that's part rendered and part wood-clad. Oh.

The Romans were good at it.  Render under to Caesar and all that.
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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #46 on: 11 May, 2015, 10:03:13 am »
Pebbledash or other varieties of render are common next to the sea, where the salt-laden spray has its own wonderful effects on brickwork.

Exactly what I have and why. Another 'advantage' for the builder is then you can build the rendered parts of the house out of breeze block instead of brick. This method is quicker and cheaper, and has been used for a long time in other countries like Germany and Austria.
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ian

Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #47 on: 11 May, 2015, 10:12:55 am »
If you've ever been to Hell or some London suburbs, I swear everything is made out of heaving and gradually cracking render and pebbledash. It makes your very soul itch. Pebbledash just looks like a concrete dinosaur vomited up the side of your house. I've lived in houses made of bricks and I didn't get wet. I presume this house is additionally armoured against Surrey Bear attacks.

(Fortunately, ours was just cracked and blown in a few places. I hate cracks. From cracks come Cthulhu.)

Mr Larrington

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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #48 on: 11 May, 2015, 10:17:45 am »
(Has Mr Hall taken out the back and discreetly murdered utterly to DETH)

"I've just pebbledashed my Transit" said Tom, vanishingly.
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Re: Need access to neighbour's land to maintain gable wall.
« Reply #49 on: 11 May, 2015, 05:06:54 pm »
I think the houses round here still with their stock bricks and soldier courses etc look an order of magnitude nicer. If our bricks hadn't been totally buggered by the cement render we'd have had them cleaned and repointed and kept them. But we knew they'd be buggered.

Mr BMW asking for a tenner was very greedy anyway, I had a look at the prices for the hand carwash on my way to the station this morning and they only charge £4.99. Not that I'm inclined to give him that either.

A new problem. I've got a written quote for the removal and lime rendering of 'all elevations excluding extension', right?

When the bossman showed up for the first time this morning as I was leaving, I asked when he was planning on removing the render from the tricky-to-get-to bit above the single storey rear kitchen extension (the single storey bit has got a pitched roof, so they can't stand on it, and is joined to the rest of the extension, which is two storey, so not really possible to scaffold - he had mentioned that might be tricker to access when he came to quote last year, but said he thought they could get round it.)

He then claimed that this was 'never part of the quote' and that the quote he'd given us didn't include that bit. Except his written quote doesn't say that. I didn't have the quote to hand at that stage and was rushing to catch a train so didn't have time to debate the point and said that wasn't my understanding, but methinks he's trying it on because they either forgot about or don't want to do this difficult bit.