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[kivah]

There's a wood fence between me and my neighbor. The horizontal wood piece that attaches to the bottom of the fence fell off (several feet). My neighbor re-did their backyard and planted flowers along the wood fence - so their sprinklers are hitting the fence and flooding my grassy area along the bottom of the fence. My gardener told me the problem is going to get worse - and to tell them - but I have a feeling they won't correct the problem. Do I have any recourse? My gardener says no.

[Sweetbay magnolia]

Correct the drainage on your side - even if the fence bottom piece were there runoff would occur, it sounds like.

[Cookie06]

Have you tried talking to your neighbors? I would politely tell them the problem and see if you can both agree on some sort of sollution. I am sure that they don't want to rot your fence with all the watering. They could use soaker hoses or something that wouldn't water your fence all the time. I would certainly try and talk to them before you give up. Good luck.

[kivah]

The fence has 7-1/2 panels and 3 panels need to be replaced. I didn't speak to the neighbor yet as the problem started recently - when they re-did their backyard. Just not sure what I could do, if the husband won't fix the problem. He should have put rocks along the fence - not flowers.

[Silver Lining]

Although they might not or you expect they won't, go ahead and talk to them. I sympathize with you, though. My neighbor on the other side of the wood privacy fence would probably get annoyed and then use the sprinklers even more.

[RainyDayGal]

It has been my experience that the other neighbors don't care about the fence. I have always had to either put one up, or maintain and fix the one that was there when I moved in. If we didn't the others would just let it get ruined. No one wants to pay for anything, yet they want to have the security the fence provides.

Good luck. If they redid their backyard, they could probably afford to pay for part of the cost of replacing the panels.

[goodstuff]

If there's a drainage problem that's causing water to run into and pool in your grassy area, it doesn't sound like a situation that would be corrected by replacing the missing fence panels, although you or your neighbor (whoever owns the fence) should replace them to keep the fence nice-looking and in good repair! If your neighbor created the drainage problem when he re-did his back yard, he might have a responsibility to correct the drainage situation. Or you may need to have a landscaper correct the slope of your yard and/or create a channel to carry off drainage water. Your neighbor should have a right to plant flowers in his yard and to water them, but I'd talk with him about the drainage problem. I doubt the fence is the problem.

[151949]

When we lived in Pa our neighbor has a spring in her yard that drained into our yard and it was constantly soggy in a portion of our yard. She would not do anything about it so we had to pay $3500 to have a french drain installed between the properties in order to dry our yard up so it could be used. When we asked her to pay for part of it she said she had no money - then went and had a facelift and butt lift done!! We were going to take her to small claims court as the law says if the source of the water is on your property that you are responsible but she decided to sell and the Realtor told her she would have a lien against her house and would have difficulty getting a clear title if we did so she gave us $1000. We decided to let it go at that.

[twocent]

On 1/8/2015 Silver Lining said: Although they might not or you expect they won't, go ahead and talk to them. I sympathize with you, though. My neighbor on the other side of the wood privacy fence would probably get annoyed and then use the sprinklers even more.

We must have the same neighbor. Mine would do the same -and could care less if the fence rotted ,as it isn't theirs.

Their unsecured trampoline flew across the top of our 6ft fence and busted the entire side of my house , during a severe storm. The neighbor said to her husband, "At least it didn't tear up anything important -like the grandkids toys ."

[05gage25]

Wow....really nice neighbors you have, twocent. What happened to the days when your neighbors were really your neighbors!