Next door's extension

[Steve]

The house next door is having an extension built. See this diagram:

As you can see their extension comes very close to ours, close to the property line. Our extension actually crosses the property line slightly, so they couldnt build up to it (its been there since 1968). Both extensions are 2 storey pitch roof.

Anyway, they dug out the footings last week, and the BC guy came to sign them off. Unfortunately, he wasnt happy because they'd dug a metre deep, less than a foot from our house wall. He told them to immediately secure acro props horizontally betwen the two buildings. This was in case we got any heavy rain over night and it undermined our foundations. But this wasnt ever specified.

The following day (saturday), the builders turned up and mixed loads of concrete and filled in the trench down the side of our house. But they have literally filled it to the top, and left a really rough surface on it, not floated it off, levelled it, or anything. It looks like they mixed up some rough, thick concrete and threw it in the trench, with some rough shuttering at both ends. Will they build on this? How? Apparently BC said the rest of the foundations can be standard strip foundations. It just all looks a bit rough, to say the original plan was to have poured readymix concrete on the foundations. This looks dreadful in comparison. Though with all that concrete there, im now confident our house wont fall down

 

[SteNova]

sounds like a quick fix before anything slipped into it, really they should have dug a meter along, filled with concrete, then dug out another meter, no risks then

 

[Hugh Jaleak]

Have you got a Party Wall Act agreement? See here: http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/planningandbuilding/pdf/133214.pdf

 

[mattysupra]

i have a simular problem with my extension. However i have a entrance/gully/driveway (call it what you want) at the side of the extension. In total there is a 2 meter drop into the footings. They have shuttered it off but we are having really heavy rain at the moment and the gully is slowley collapsing into the footings even with the shuttering. Basically the soil is turning to mush and washing down the back of the shuttering.


To get back to the point. "stenova" you say that they should dig 1 meter and then fill? Building regs would not allow us to do this. They wanted to see the depth of all the footings before we could fill with concrete.

Should we of been allowed to do this then as the gully way is collapsing on us. We have the concrete in now but we still need 1 meter of retaining wall to be built. Building regs have inspected and told us to build upto DPC and they will come and inspect again which means another few days of no retaining wall!

 

[alittlerespect]

Hi

It was nothing to do with rain, by digging the foundations they way they did they had undermined the stability of your foundations and it would have only been a matter of time before the elevation of your building would have been rubble! The only thing you had on your side was luck!

Begs the question, 'is a party wall agreement in place'?

Regards