Problems with water runoff from our neighbour.

[mja]

Hi all!

We have a slight issue with one of our IPs in Brisbane. It's sitting on a hill, and we're on the downward slope from our neighbour to the left of us.

When it really rains hard, there is a huge amount of excess water that pools up in our neighbours yard, then flows under the fence onto our side of the property. Flow is probably an incorrect word to use. More like "gush".

Anyhoo, bits of loose topsoil accompany the water over our retaining wall, down to our concrete path along the side of the house. This path has a number of drains to capture the water, but the drains get blocked with the sediment, which causes the side of the path to flood during a downpour.

So, my question is - who's responsible for this excess water?

I've asked my neighbour (who's also a landlord) to investigate the problem. They've sent a plumber out who claims that it's our problem due to the slope of the land.

Why should I have to dig a trench and stick an agpipe in to capture the water on my side, due to the way our neighbour has contoured their backyard? The boundary fence is sitting on a single 25cm sleeper retaining wall post the whole distance, and has no agpipe installed underneath it.

This is in Ipswich City Council, if that's any help.

Cheers!

-- MJ.

 

[Collector]

My first action would be to contact the council, ask them to inspect the property and advice you of what is needed and who is responsible.

 

[The Y-man]

MJ,

Can you pipe the excess down to Melbourne - it would be appreciated.

Also wouldn't mind the top soil

Cheers,

The Y-man

 

[marg4000]

Water runs downhill - it's a simple fact.

Brisbane/Ipswich are in the sub-tropics and subject to torrential downpours from time to time. And this year has seen a return to the normal summer storm season after many years of drought.

Chances are that the water is not ALL falling on your neighbour's property, a proportion of it may be coming from higher up the slope.

In these cases there is not much anyone can do except let the water drain away.
Marg

 

[wylie]

What Marg said.....

However, my parents' house at Annerley is on a slope and the neighbour has cemented his front and side yard, and made a spoon drain directing the water over the retaining wall straight into my parents' IP yard. It was causing considerably drainage problems for mum's house. My parents were made aware of it when the next neighbour down the hill called her because it was causing them even more problems.

She approached the neighbour, who she has had a good relationship with over many years. She told the neighbour she would see whether the Council had any issues with their spoon drain. Council over the phone said "you are on a hill yada, yada, yada" but agreed to do an inspection.

Once inspected, Council suggested that the uphill neighbour had acted "with intent" and the neighbour was made to rectify the draining issue. I believe it cost him a few thousand to fix.

So..... it is worth keeping cool, asking the Council to take a look, and you may find they decide in your favour.

 

[mja]

Thanks all.

I don't think our neighbours landscapers had "intent"... they just did a sucky job. I'll see what council says...

-- MJ.

 

[marg4000]

As Wylie said, you cannot deliberately direct water into a neighbour's property.

By the same token, you cannot build walls around your property to prevent water entering it, as you are diverting the water onto other properties.

Our back neighbour whose land is lower than ours continually objected to water flowing along backyards and into his property. As we could not make the water flow uphill there was not much we could do to help. Simply in an effort to aid neighbourhood peacekeeping we even offered to go halves in a drain through his yard to take the water to the street, but he did not see why he should contribute!!!

In the end he built a low wall to try to prevent water entering his yard. We were not too upset because the top of the wall was still below the level of most of our yard. To find out the official position we contacted the council (Brisbane) and were told that his wall was illegal as he was diverting runoff water from its "natural flow".

As it did not affect us at all (apart from a few puddles) we did nothing about it.
Marg

 

[Imitation]

From what I know.. though may not be correct.

In Adelaide you are responsible for your own runoff.. whether you are on a hill or not. You land.. your water.. you dig the drains and get the water to the street.. I guess unless you're backing onto a valley or something it might be different - but general rule is deal with your own water.

In Darwin it's completely different. Our local council actually says that if you cut he kerbside they can have you for damaging the road! All drainage should technically join directly into the storm water system below ground.. doesn't stop heaps of people from cutting the kerb it though. Otherwise just let the water run wherever the hell it runs.. neighbors be damned!

 

[granev]

what the hell is water runoff ?

i wish someone would direct some to our house

 

[wylie]

I know that in the situation my mother faced the uphill neighbour was made to redirect the water only because he had concreted the yard and channelled the water to gush straight over the top of their retaining wall.

Last year, we had our downhill neighbours from an IP bail up our pestman about the storm water run off from our IP. We contacted our plumber who took a look for us and eeled the three storm water pipes already on the house and all looking like they connected to "somewhere". All three pipes were chock full of silt. We were told by the council to dig a rubble pit one metre cubed, and direct the storm water pipes to this pit. Plumber did this for us, and told us that it too would silt up, but we had done "our duty".

Basically what it meant was that downpipes already in situ need to be working, but if our house didn't already have downpipes connected we had no obligation to run a connection. (At least this is what the council staffer told us.)

So normal "on a hill" general run off seems to be okay, but when you change the course of the water, or when your downpipes are blocked and it causes problems down hill (as we had) it needs to be addressed.

I might add that the whinging neighbours didn't seem to realise that we are the sixth house down hill from a corner and we also had six houses worth of water rushing over our block. They wanted us to fix everything for them. We fixed our bit, but the water will still gush over all the blocks all the way down the hill.

I know for a fact that on our street all the houses on the opposite side of the road (slightly lower than our side and all sloping blocks) there never have been storm water drains and the people across the road spent a lot of money having better drainage put in, although there was no law that made them do it.

 

[Dazz]

my question is - who's responsible for this excess water?

Ask your solicitor to do a Billy Connolly and sue "God".

 

[boomtown]

As a non-human, God currently does not have standing in the Supreme Court of Queensland. This can be determined by reference to the Rule in Rene Joly v The Queen (and others) which stands for the proposition that a Martian does not have standing in a court in Ontario.

Link to decision below:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/e/e6/Rene_Joly_v_Pelletier_and_others.pdf

Key excerpts:

[para2] Mr. Joly's claims in these two actions, and in several others not currently before me, all centre on his firm assertion that he is not a human being; rather a martian. As I understand them, the nature of his complaints against the numerous defendants who include a number of doctors, medical facilities and government agencies is that they have conspired with the American government in its attempts to eliminate him and have otherwise taken various steps to interfere with his ability to establish himself and live freely as a martian.

[...]

Neither pleading discloses a cause of action. While
conspiracy to do harm to someone is the basis of
many actions in this Court there is a fundamental
flaw in the position of Mr. Joly. Rule 1.03 defines
plaintiff as "a person who commences an action".
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines
person as "an individual human being". Section 29
of the Interpretation Act provides that a person
includes a corporation. It follows that if the
plaintiff is not a person in that he is neither a
human being nor a corporation, he cannot be a
plaintiff as contemplated by the Rules of Civil
Procedure. The entire basis of Mr. Joly's actions
is that he is a martian, not a human being. There
is certainly no suggestion that he is a corporation.
I conclude therefore, that Mr. Joly, on his pleading
as drafted, has no status before the Court.

 

[mja]

Quick update on this guys... my property manager has been in contact with Ipswich CC and Brisbane CC and unless there is a device or something that the neighbour has intentionally done to divert water, there's pretty much no recourse.

Also, there is quite a backlog currently for a representative from council to drive out and inspect the water draining issue - currently 540 cases and a 2-3 month wait. Suspect the rain before Christmas may have been a contributing factor.

If I have to get an agpipe installed, I'm going to make sure that the excess flow is diverted out to my 3 Calistamon's growing at the front. They're destined to grow to at least 8 metres in length, and this will block the neighbour's view of the golf course from their front porch.

 

[Stella]

Gold Coast Council has the same opinion - water runs downhill and if it hasnt been intentionally diverted to a neighbouring property they dont wan tot know about any problems.
We live half way & get gushing run off from a number of houses, which then flows to the house below us.
We have had so many run ins with the jerk below us as he cant seem to realise that we can only do so much to redirect the water as it comes into our yard at a different place each time if rains, depending on how heavy the rain is. We have installed pits & pipes which seems to work on average rain & in heavy rain we flood as much as he does but this neighbour is so bad that people living above us are too scared to come out after heavy rain as he is known to be abusive & threatening.

Next time I will not take it for granted that possible water flow problems from uphill would have been dealt with in a house 20yrs old!

Cheers
Stella

 

[see_change]

If I have to get an agpipe installed, I'm going to make sure that the excess flow is diverted out to my 3 Calistamon's growing at the front. They're destined to grow to at least 8 metres in length, and this will block the neighbour's view of the golf course from their front porch.

But then again if you plant trees that are deemed to deliberately block someones view they can take action against you ......

Cliff

 

[mja]

But then again if you plant trees that are deemed to deliberately block someones view they can take action against you ......

I wouldn't call it deliberate. Trees grow. Water runs down hill too, apparently.

Karma.

-- MJ.

 

[Bill.L]

Hi all,

Gold Coast Council has the same opinion - water runs downhill

Good to know from the councils perspective that nothing is real until they have an opinion on it.
Did they not know until this opinion??

And of course, what constitutes a fact for this council??

bye

PS, I have no problem with my neighbours directing their runoff in my direction.

 

[mja]

Drainage problem solved!

Hi all,

An update to this:

This month I flew up to Brisbane with a couple of lads, and installed a solution that should fix this problem.

The original problem was the concentration of water. This picture details how 55mm of rain in 30 minutes can generate a torrent of water:

Rather than dig a trench along the top of the sandstone retaining wall, we decided to build a drain next to the fence. This involved 10 x 2.4m sleepers, some star pickets to keep the sleepers in place, some geofabric laid inside the make-shift drain (that helps keep silt out), 100mm socked-agpipe installed along the length of the fence, covered up with 40mm drainage gravel. This will catch and disperse the water flowing from our neighbour to the front of the property. The fence has an existing 1 sleeper high retaining installed underneath it. We positioned the new sleepers about 20cm from the boundary.

In addition to this, we installed another socked ag-pipe (smaller - 65mm wide) along the base of the sandstone blocks to catch any excess water and drain it to the rear of the property. Here's a picture of the lower part of the retaining wall:

What did it cost?

Labour: $0.

Materials:

* Treated Pine Sleepers: $148.68
* Star pickets: $162.72
* Bugal screws: $14.57
* 2 x 20m x 100mm Socked Ag-Pipe: $119.80
* 2 x 20m x 65mm Socked Ag-Pipe: $79.80
* 2 cubic metres of 40mm drainage gravel: $137.10
* 8 lineal metres of Geofabric: $52.88
* Delivery of materials: $52.80
* Lunch for "helpers": $42.15

Total to fix problem: $810.50

We had just enough drainage gravel, 2 spare sleepers and 6 spare star pickets.

I had received a quote to do this work professionally of $19500 + GST to have a drain installed under the driveway connected to an agpipe. WTF?

The hardest part was the heavy labour in shifting the 2 cubic metres of drainage gravel that had been dumped on the driveway:

Started: 9am, finished: 5pm, just as the sun was settling in.

I'm not sure whether to claim this as a repair or improvement. I've "fixed" the retaining wall so water is dispersed, but really I've improved the retaining wall by adding ag-pipe. Gut instinct tells me "improvement".

Cheers!

-- MJ.

 

[craigb]

Nice job! well done , could you catch the water, so when you have 20 mins of rain, your tanks are full, allowing you to water plants and lawn all year!

 

[kum yin lau]

Hi MJ, thanks for putting up the details here. I've had the problem for 6 years & everytime there's a downpour [very rare in Adelaide], tenants complain like hell.

My agent suggested doing what you've done. There were other suggestions, 'better' ones such as building cement drains. Whatever we do, we'd have to put in at least one sump. The cement drain quote came in at >7thousand. Like you, I went WTF?

I looked at the lie of the land again & I think the Boral retaining blocks with a sump leading to the stormwater gutters can be a cool solution.

I think around 3 thousand is enough to do a good job.

KY