retaining wall disaster

[hellsteeth1]

I am in the process of digging out my garden and may have gone a bit close to the neighbours garage.
Is there any rule of thumb with regards to how close I can go as the garage in question has some fairly large cracks in it.
The builder tells me that he can 'sure up' the garage using some concrete blocks and hide it with mud.
I am worried that the neighbour will come back and blame me for any problems in the future. He was quite happy with me digging out the garden but I don't think he fully understood what I was doing.
Sounds crazy but should I contact him or try to hide the cracks/repair them when hes on holiday.

many thanks for any suggestions.

 

[electronicsuk]

Sounds crazy but should I contact him or try to hide the cracks/repair them when hes on holiday.

I suspect you already know the correct answer.

 

[ColJack]

you're going to have to cop for the cost of underpinning and repairs to his property if you've caused them by undermining his foundations..

 

[conny]

Surely this would only happen if he dug under the garage foundations?
If he just dug alongside of them would this still have an effect?

 

[IJWS15]

As I understand it you are not allowede to excavate in a zone within 45 degrees (angled downwards) from the foundations.

If his garage was cracked before you started I presume you have photographs to prove this.

Two houses ago we built an extension under guidance from council building regs. At one stage we realised that our foundation trench was four feet below and one foot away from the foundations of the neighbours extension - we could push a wrecking bar into the clay under his wall. That is when we realised why our garden wall had been leaning - his land was higher than ours and I guess the builder had not looked over the fence or had looked and thought "what the ....." resulting in his foundation being too shallow.

 

[Static]

As I understand it you are not allowede to excavate in a zone within 45 degrees (angled downwards) from the foundations.

Spot on.. so you dig down 1m for your retaining wall foundation, then you need to make sure its 1m away from his garage etc..

Otherwise your undermining his garage and should be putting in a designed retaining wall for that..

 

[ajrobb]

I think it is covered by The Party Wall etc. Act 1996

"You will be required to give notice if you plan to excavate and construct foundations for a new structure within 3.0m of a neighbouring property or within 6.0m if the works will cut a line drawn downwards at 45° from the bottom of the neighbour’s foundation."

 

[madmole]

When we had our kitchen extension done (5 ft foundations required) we notified next door (our extension was to run parallell to her 15 year old one, 30 cms away). When we started to dig we discovered they had foundations of a single brick!!!!!!

Called the building inspector who come out and said, dig the hole as late as possible and pour councrete immediately. if her extension cracks or falls its on her head as they never had planning permission and it was definately not to building regs, even at the time it was built. As it was more than 12 years old he wasnt going to do anything about it though

So we dug the trench, starting at one end and filled with concrete as we went. Had no problems amazingly, and now of course our foundations are supporting her extension

Mind you she also has her garden pond and garage wired in 1.5mm flex with no RCD