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Fresh Cheese August 24th 05 02:54 PM

Sealing gap between external walls
 
Next door to my end of terrace two-storey house is a car workshop
garage. They have an approx 8' high wall that starts around the middle
of my house and stretches back to the end of my garden. This wall runs
at a very slight diagonal, starting a few inches out from my wall and
then actually joining with mine at the back corner of my house. This
means that there is a small gap between their wall and mine. This gap
is covered with flashing/guttering that has rotted away, and water
appears to be running down into this gap when it rains - this has
caused a damp patch on the inside of my wall. The problem is made worse
because the garage has a sloping roof that slopes down towards the gap
& that has defective additional guttering. The gap is inaccessible from
both ends - the only way to get at it is from above (or through the
wall I guess).

A diagram might help:

| Roof|
Back | |
------|\ |Garage
Damp-|| |
|| |
|------|
|
House |
------|
Front

I spoke to the garage owner about this, and he had a friend who is a
roofer come take a look at it. He said it would be a difficult job
because it would involve removing part of the garage's roof (made of
corrugated asbestos-cement sheeting) so that this flashing/guttering
could be replaced, and he gave a rough estimate of =A31500 but said that
it could be a fair bit more.

I've had two other roofing contractors take a look, and both said they
couldn't do anything & the best that I could do would be to inject a
chemical DPC in the wall. That sounds like a waste of time to me
because it's not tackling the root-cause of the problem. I think the
best thing to do would be to clear out any muck that has got into the
gap and seal it over.

My questions a

1=2E Does my solution to the problem of the damp sound like the best
course of action?

2=2E Does the garage owner have any responsibility in helping to sort
this out? I'm reasonably happy to pay for the work, but I don't really
want to have to pay more if the garage owner wants the work to be done
outside of their working hours (for example).

3=2E Section 41 of the party wall act (URL below) mentions that there are
proprietary products for sealing gaps between walls - anyone know what
these are and whether they would be suitable? I couldn't find anything
obvious with google.
http://snipurl.com/h6og

4=2E Can anyone recommend a roofer near South Croydon who'd be interested
in this job?

House and garage both date from the 1890's (garage was a cow shed back
then though!), walls are made of brick.

Thanks for reading - appreciate any help with this.


Christian McArdle August 24th 05 04:18 PM

2. Does the garage owner have any responsibility in helping to sort
this out?

Personally, I would have thought that the garage owner is liable for the
damage and should fix his own guttering at his own expense. I might go
further and suggest they would be liable for the damp damage to your
property, too, although I wouldn't push my luck with this if I wanted to
maintain good relations.

You're not allowed to drain your buildings onto your neighbours' walls.

Christian.




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