Neighbor Problems?

Do you get along with your neighbors? Or do you have problems with them?

B_Skurka said:

Do you get along with your neighbors? Or do you have problems with them?

Click to expand...

Yes.

The family straight accross the road is great. Get along with them fine.

The neighbor to the east we had a small quibble regarding them farming 20' onto my property when we bought the place, but that is done, and we are cordially cool with each other.

Really, I have no other neighbors. Total of six houses in a one mile radius (including the two already mentioned).

I get along great with all of them except one, and I've posted about him, so I won't bore everyone with a re-hash. The guy seems to have difficulty understanding the concept of private property; though he has learned it can be quite stressful to trample on some neighbors rights though.

I think he has pissed off just about everyone within sight of his house so far. What a wanker.

In Idaho and Panama my nieghbors are incredible . In California ,I had a great nieghbor until she moved . The new nieghbor is a new real estate agent , knows everything , and is a royal pain in the Ass . She informed me the other day that I was using too much water on my lawns and her place was not getting enough water because of it . I AM ON A WELL ????
Every time this "whiz bang real estate agent" opens her stupid mouth she just makes herself look more ignorant .

We had great neighbors at our house in the suburbs. One side we never saw, the other side we got along with . . . then they moved. New family was nice enough but seemed to intrude a bit. No big problem because we were already building the house in the country so we moved!

Out here for 11 years now and its been great for 10. Neighbor to my south is a nice family. They thought they owned about 50' of my property, but I showed him it was mine, there was NO problem, he simply didn't know how to read the surveys, we got along before the misunderstanding, during and after.

Last summer we got new neighbors on the north. 2 cute chocolate lab puppies kept visiting our house making my dogs crazy, also digging up the lawn (and my lawn is crappy to begin with). They didn't pay association dues. Parked a BIG truck in the drive every day (specifically forbidden by land covenants}. So OK I work all that out. Now this year they have this new yapper dog who was recently attacked by my big dog INSIDE my own yard.

They are just ignorant of their neighbors. They seem to care about things but don't realize that their dogs don't stay on their property or that, despite the fact that they live on 5+ acres that what they do on that land does not always stay on that land.

I'm glad that I don't have neighbors who actually try to be a PITA. But still, it is damn annoying to have to deal with the little junk.

B_Skurka said:

...........I'm glad that I don't have neighbors who actually try to be a PITA. But still, it is damn annoying to have to deal with the little junk.

Click to expand...

What the hell did I do to you to deserve this??????? Junk

The neighbors we have are all pretty good and we all get along. Share things and it is just a great relationship all around.

But I know what it is like to have a bad neighbor. I had one about 25 years ago in a town house. Never again I hope.


murph

Hey Bob, you reminded me of the neighbor we had when I lived in a fraternity in college. They had this damn dog that was on a chain and barked 18 hours a day. Also, it was big and as mean as hell. It made it nearly impossible for me to study. The owners would tell us to f*ck off if we complained.


So, I followed the instructions I read. I fried up a sponge in some used oil. It shrank down to a nice small biscuit. After it cooled, I chucked it over to the nasty mutt. After a few days, no more barking dog.

My neighbors have been good so far. However the closest one just moved to Denver and left their place with a 20 year old friend. He has lots of other High School age friends. They come and go constantly and are not cordial (will avoid eye contact at all costs). They are far enough away (500 feet) that it is no problem to me, but it still has me concerned. So many coming and going at all hours is a bad sign. I know what it indicates but I hate to jump to conclusions. They've had one party that I know of, but they kept it under control.

Bob, sounds like you need to send your problem neighbors an 'invisible fence' salesman. They have the room to allow their dogs to roam, but the dogs do not know the boundries. I have 2 1/2 acres fenced in with invisible fence. It works great.

Bob, You should be so lucky. I started a thread on TBN last fall about my new neighbors and what to do with them. It is still running if you want to see the pictures of what these people have done to my property. After 29 years of living happily in the country these rich city folk move in. They had a contractor come in and run a 20-30 ton excavator over my stone culvert on my access road to my 36 acre woodlot causing it to collapse, illegally removed their wetlands, illegally put in perimeter drains, taken down my stone walls to run the drains onto my property. Which in turn causes my land to flood out everytime it rains. I have since removed one perimeter drain pipe and rebuilt the wall. Two weeks ago I found the collapsed culvert and spent a day replacing it with a 12" pipe. The C.C. gave them a Cease and Desist order back in March to restore the land back to its original condition by July 1st. They sent them another letter to confirm the July 1st deadline. The neighbors have not ackowledged them one bit. They have not restored their property. They have taken down more trees in said wetlands area illegally which I have documented photos of. They have installed a horse rink which is illegall according to their deed because of the wetlands issue. They are illegally boarding horses on their property without a permit. They have an under 5 acre lot which requires a special permit to have horses. There are 28 wetlands restrictions on their property which are written on the land title deed. They have violated every single one of them. As of July 1st the state DEP will take over the case and prosecute them. On July 1st we are proceeding with a civil lawsuit against them for property damages, work done, lawyers fees, pain and suffering. On July 1st we will be requesting to the town that these people's horses be removed immediately. As far as I am concerned they have had their chance. Now it will be up to the law to put them in there place.

Jim, the had a contractor take down your stone wall? And the contractor collapsed your culvert?

Did you talk to the contractor too?

Sounds to me like you have the neighbors from hell. I'm really curious what the contractor said when you talked with him about the fact that he was doing work on YOUR land, WITHOUT a work permit from your county, and while TRESSPASSING.

Bob,

Everything was found out after the fact. The excavator thing I noticed two weeks later and blew it off as the new neighbor had just had a new tar driveway put in. I let that one go. Two months later I found the first perimeter drain pipe and stonewall torn down with 15-20 feet of pipe laying on my property. Back in January we had heavy rains. That was when I found the other two pipes through my wall. They rebuilt the wall to hide the pipes. But the ends of the pipes are located on my property. Not to mention that it is illegall to direct water onto someone else's property. The culvert I found out about recently when I tried to run a piece of 4" plastic pipe through it to clean it out. I then tried a 2" piece and couldn't get that through either. This was a 12" stone culvert that was built in the late 1800's. I looked through the culvert with a flashlight to find it was full of smaller rocks and blocked off. I dug up the ground to find the large flat stones had all collapsed on one side dropping smaller stones into the culvert. That is now fixed. I forgot to mention that we are also going to file a civil suit against the contractor for the same reasons. Either one or both are going to pay for this.

JimR said:

Back in January we had heavy rains. That was when I found the other two pipes through my wall. They rebuilt the wall to hide the pipes. But the ends of the pipes are located on my property. Not to mention that it is illegall to direct water onto someone else's property.

Click to expand...

It is AMAZING a contractor would do that! They know damn well that water cannot be redirected onto adjacent property. I presume that is a law in virtually every state. We are not allowed to alter the natural path of the water across our property where I live. I can direct it around a structure with swales, but it must then be redirected to follow its normal path so when it eventually drains off my property it effectively drains off in the original way prior to when the structure was built.

I wonder how much $$$ the contractor got to violate the law? Odds are, the fines and penalties will be a lot higher than the original payment!

Wow, the last two issues mentioned here are very similar to what I've experienced lately. My first issue is the funniest, although it wasn't funny at the time. When I bought my property where my house is, one corner of the property always stayed wet and there was basically a small stream that ran from the natural spring. To me, that was a logical place for me to put my lake, so I did.

In the year or so it took for my lake to fill up, the property owners down hill from me noticed that the water that had flowed across one part of their property had suddenly quit flowing and they were elated and put up a yard barn on their newly dried out property. As Bob had mentioned, you must direct the water flow back to where it naturally ran. That dictated where my overflow pipe ran; where the natural small stream bed was. Makes perfect sense, right?

I get served with papers from the neighbor suing me for creating water and diverting it onto their property once my lake is full and the water began flowing again! Although I obviously won the court battle, I'm still seething that I even had to defend myself against such a bogus law suit!

The next issue is with trespassers. On a couple hundred acre piece of property I bought about 20 miles from my house, I had constant problems with trespassers who not only were trespassing, but destroying things and leaving trash. I was going to build a fence all the way down the one side of the property that borders a road, but that would have been over a mile of fence. Instead, I called in a favor from a buddy and used his D6 dozer to dig a "natural" (but deep and steep) ditch all along that side of my property with only one entrance where I put a gate.

I've seen evidence where two people have tried to cross the ditch with their "monster" trucks but didn't make it. I also saw one area that was really a mess. While I was using my tractor to fix that part of a ditch an old guy driving by stopped and told me what happened. Apparently one of the long term trespassers decided to drive his backhoe there and open up a place for him to gain access again to my property. Apparently he screwed up and turned his hoe over into my ditch. Better yet, a game warden came along to help. The game warden refused the trespasser to call another of his buddies to get his hoe out of my ditch and called in a commercial wrecker. I bet that cost him! It just seems strange that I've never heard from the game warden, the state, nor the guy who was attempting to trespass. Oh well...

I'm glad to hear the ditch idea worked for you Brent. I remember the thread and all the crap you had to go through before the ditch. The iceing on the cake is that he got his backhoe stuck. I doubt he learned anything, but like you said, hopefully it cost him a good chunk of change to get the hoe out.

If you wanted you could probably track down the game warden and find out who he called to tow the hoe out, and maybe get the name of the long time tresspasser. Then take your buddies D6 over to his house and mess with him like he has with you.

Dargo,

I remember that thread also. You really should find out who he is. More than likely he will cause you aggravation again. A truckload of cow manure at the end of his driveway would be nice. I thought of doing this to my neighbor. They would know who did it though and I would be in trouble. Right now I want the law on my side.

Bob,

The contractor and land owner will both be fined by the DEP. I have already been informed of this. The amount will go up if the DEP has to take it to court.
It is also going to cost them once the lawsuit starts from us. They are in for a double whammy on this one. I bet it costs them a lot more in fines and suits than the 30-40K he spent to have his land all trenched and piped. Not to mention removal of the wetlands. Filling in of them. The cost to remove the horse rink and restoring all of the property to the way it was. Plus the replanting of removed trees and brush. We have the old neighbors property pictures to show how the land was previous to them selling it. They are in for a big surprise when the pictures are shown to the DEP. They really shouldn't have messed with my property. I think the biggest slap is when I ask the town to have the horses removed. In order to get a horse permit. There needs to be a special meeting held with town board members and any abutting neighbors that may be concerned with them having horses. Should they have this meeting, I'm going. I will explain to the town. That the new neighbors are not responsible enough and show no concern for the abutting neighbors property.

You certainly are entitled you your opinion of the MA DEP, but I have seen them sit on there hands for years in some instances. It is a crap shoot as to what action that they will take. I believe that they are more politically inclined to favor the side that is influencing the outcome, more than that which is fair and proper. It is only a week away, so hopefully they will act on your behalf, but don't be surprised if you only get talk and no action.

Dargo said:

So, I followed the instructions I read. I fried up a sponge in some used oil. It shrank down to a nice small biscuit. After it cooled, I chucked it over to the nasty mutt. After a few days, no more barking dog.

Click to expand...

Thats a new one. You fried a sponge in used motor oil and the dog ate it?

Cityboy said:

Thats a new one. You fried a sponge in used motor oil and the dog ate it?

Click to expand...

Cooking oil.

Those foam peanuts in hot bacon grease do the same thing.

When you're done cooking them, they're very small. When ingested, the body soaks the grease out of the foam or sponge. The foam/sponge then generates a pretty intense blockage.

Anyone ever see what alka-selzer does to seagulls (because a gull will catch it out of the air and immediately swallow it). That's pretty nasty as well (although much quicker).

I don't have any neighbor problems. On one side, I'd do anything for her and she'd attempt to do the same for me. She cuts part of my lawn and I cut part of hers. I share her veggies when they ripen up, she helps herself to my fruit.
Now the lady on the other side, when she sees me out in the yard, she turns tail and runs in the house, no problem.

OhioTC18 said:

I don't have any neighbor problems. On one side, I'd do anything for her and she'd attempt to do the same for me. She cuts part of my lawn and I cut part of hers. I share her veggies when they ripen up, she helps herself to my fruit.

Click to expand...

Sharing each others fruits and veggies...mowin' each others lawn...

You da man OTC!

Hee Hee Hee

Junkman said:

You certainly are entitled you your opinion of the MA DEP, but I have seen them sit on there hands for years in some instances. It is a crap shoot as to what action that they will take. I believe that they are more politically inclined to favor the side that is influencing the outcome, more than that which is fair and proper. It is only a week away, so hopefully they will act on your behalf, but don't be surprised if you only get talk and no action.

Click to expand...

That's when the news gets the info and the lawsuits start. Including the DEP if they fail to act. We are planning on carrying this all the way to the end to get it done, one way or the other.

OhioTC18 said:

I don't have any neighbor problems. On one side, I'd do anything for her and she'd attempt to do the same for me. She cuts part of my lawn and I cut part of hers. I share her veggies when they ripen up, she helps herself to my fruit.

Click to expand...

Wife know about this??

B_Skurka said:

Do you get along with your neighbors? Or do you have problems with them?

Click to expand...

Well, "All and All" we get along with most of our neighbors. Most are at least 20 year our senior. But we have a few. As we live at our mtn home, most of the people just use theirs as summer time only cabins. We finally met one set of our neighbors we have never seen up here but twice in the 5 years here. They decided to build a fence. Guess where?? In the road right of way.. so I very politely went over and introduced myself. Visited for a while then " I let it drop ". "Are you building a fence along the roadway?" They said, "Yes, we thought we'd fence our property". "Hmm," I said. Do you have a plot of the subdivision?" Of course they said yes. I told them if they looked at it there is a 50' right of way.. They said they didn't realize it.. RIGHT!! I told them that I didn't want to sound mean but I sure would hate to see it tore down if something or someone came in and it was in the way.. hmmmm. Not saying We'd do it. .....Then of course we have the real oldies. You know the ones that seem to think because they were one of the first here, that they know it all. We found out that the main road is in the wrong place. The people that own that acre have been too scared to say anything to anyone, but they have less of an acre then. So, we put some steel posts up where the real road should go.. Caused some excitment there, let me tell you...lol..We just like to keep the neighborhood going

JimR said:

That's when the news gets the info and the lawsuits start. Including the DEP if they fail to act. We are planning on carrying this all the way to the end to get it done, one way or the other.

Click to expand...

I have a friend at the MA DEP and also a friend that has a problem with neighbors filling in my friends swampland. He has complained to the Conservation Commission and the DEP. He was advised that HE is responsible for the violation, not the persons doing the filling, and that it will be HE that will be required to do remedial action on his land. He can sue the violators for the costs, but the way the law works in MA, the land owner is the responsible party for all violations. I don't agree with the law the way it is written, but that is the way it is. When it comes to environmental laws, there is no common sense involved. I am certain that you know about the laws against trapping and what has happened in some communities where the beaver have more property rights, than the person that pays the taxes on the land. I remember seeing a documentary on Boston PBS that showed a home that was surrounded by water because the owner couldn't remove the beavers that dammed the stream behind their home. It rendered the home unsaleable, but the DEP wouldn't give them any relief.... Such is Massachusetts....... I am certain that there are other states that also have such ridiculous laws that give the animals more rights than the people.... Junk.

Junk,

Fortunately for me there has been no filling in on my land. Only the stupid neighbors. From what I have seen lately, the DEP has done its job real well. I know a big name builder (Blair) that decided to make his 65' waterfront a hundred feet longer. The lake he is on feeds a resevoir (Quabbin) at least 25 miles away. He took out all the trees and bushes and put in many truckloads of beach sand. Guess who now has a 65' frontage on his lake again. He was fined, forced to remove the beach sand and had to replant the area disturbed. The local C.C. and DEP ate him right up in court.

Once again, it depends on if you are in political favor or not. There was a fellow in Eastern MA that tore down a house that was on the beach and built a new house in its place, all without a permit. He violated all the codes, but got away with it. Same on a lake in the Brookfields. Tore the house down, cleared the trees and leveled the hill to improve his waterfront property. By the time the CC and DEP got involved, the house was under construction and they let it go. My guess is that they pick and choose there fights and some are not worth the cost of prosecution, and others are. Lucky for you that they didn't violate your land any more than they did, because it can get into a dog fight and cost a lot. Many times court and attorney fees are not recoverable.

My solution to the problem is very simple if we fail. I will tear down the wall and rebuild it with cement. This will dam up his property and flood the area in question that he has put perimeter drains which has caused the flooding of my property when it rains. I will also be bringing up an issue of silt runoff from his property which is filling in the pond behind my house. I should mention that this land is ALL under the MA. watershed act and feeds a drinking water resevoir. I do believe that once this hits the news, the DEP will have no choice but to act immediately on it.

How about this solution: