Friday, June 12, 2009

Stupid Neighbor!

One of our neighbors lives on the corner and his property backs up to the side of our house. I don't know what it is with this guy, but he is addicted to watering his back yard. He always waters way too long and since our property is lower than his water floods into the side of our yard.

This didn't used to be such a problem, but somehow the drainage on the side of our house has gotten messed up and so the water turns the side of our house into a pond. It has been flooding our garage regularly for the last few weeks. I am constantly having to go over there and ask him to turn off his water because my garage is once again flood.

And what's his response to this? It's not, "I'm sorry. I'll go turn it off and stop watering so frickin' much," like any decent human being would respond. Instead, he always claims he has only been watering for 10-15 minutes. I'm sorry, but if I turned on a hose by the side of my house and let in run directly into my garage it wouldn't get that flooded after 10-15 minutes. Some of the water should actually absorb into his stupid lawn if he needed to water.

What makes it worse is that we want to fix the drainage, but we can't because he waters so much that the ground never has a chance to dry enough for us to dig down and fix the drainage pipe. I am so freaking annoyed by this whole situation. I'm seriously considering reporting him for wasting water. I haven't done it yet because I'm not the kind of person that tells on people. I generally believe that you can go to the person and work it out. However, I have tried that and it doesn't seem to get through this guy's thick skull. Next time I think I'll just turn off his water main instead of knocking on his door for 10 minutes (while my garage floods more and more) trying to talk to him.

5 comments:

Steph said...

Hmmm. Are there any watering laws that he's violating? I'd turn him in, you can do that anonymously. I've had one too many crazy neighbors, so I keep it to a nod & hello whenever possible.

Any chance of telling him that you're going to fix it & having him keep the water off for a couple days?

Robin said...

What a freak!! We used to have a neighbor that obsessively moved their lawn. It was all hours all the time it seemed like. But that's not nearly as bad as what you're going through.

There has to be a way to report him. Can you videotape whats happening and have him pay for the damage in small claims court? (Big pain in the a$$ I realize but maybe just the threat of it would get him to realize what's going on.)

Anna and Dusty said...

Maybe he likes wasting his money by watering your garage?? Either way, if he doesn't stop soon I would complain, you can't live with a flooded garage.
Good luck, I hope it gets worked out soon!!

Megan said...

I agree with everyone else. You've already tried to work it out because you've talked to him several times. And it would be better to report him than turn off his water!

Jen said...

Of course I remember you!!!

I have thought of you often, but for some reason I lost your email on my computer so I didn't know how to get a hold of you and I don't go on the WebMd boards anymore...too hard.

Thanks for the comment on my blog. I'm adding you to the list of blogs I read daily.