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We moved to an upscale neighborhood in McKinney a year ago, and our next door neighbor has three magnolia trees in his back yard bordering our side yard and his driveway. These trees shed large leaves all the time, most of which seem to end up in our yard. We suspect that he continually gets his leaf blower out and blows HIS leaves from HIS trees off HIS driveway and onto OUR lawn on the side of OUR house. The leaves will be all over his driveway in the morning when we leave for work, and when we get home they are all on our lawn, his driveway perfectly clean. He is retired so he has time to blow them off his driveway while we are away. I tried just letting the leaves accumulate and not mowing or taking care of that area of the yard. I thought maybe he would get the idea that he is going to have to keep blowing the same leaves back every day. But that did no good. Then I decided to clean it all up and spent hours on the weekends raking up the leaves and hauling them off. We even bought a leaf vacuum but the leaves are so big they clog up the vacuum. My husband has tried talking to the man in a nice way, saying we bought the vacuum because we wouldn't want to blow our yard debris on our neighbors' yards. "HINT HINT" Anyway, that worked for a day...I peeked out the window and saw him begrudgingly sweeping the leaves on his driveway up and putting them in his trash bin. But then a few days later my son saw him blowing with the leaf blower while we were at work. He must have not noticed our son was in town visiting us and could see what he was doing from our window. So my son went out and swept them all back onto his driveway that evening.
It appears that we will probably have to build a retaining wall and high fence along the side of the house to prevent this from happening. It seems like a lot of money to have to spend just to keep our neighbor from continually trashing our property. Or maybe surveillance cameras? I even thought about posting a sign: "Dumping Area" of "Why blow YOUR leaves onto OUR property?" or maybe: "God sees what you are doing" (since he is a church-going religious freak) that he can view every time he does this. Or maybe I should complain to the HOA or city police?? If anyone has anyone had a similar problem and found a good solution I would love to hear about it...
Just go talk to him, cameras seems a little extreme..Nothing passive aggressive, just straight forward talk, like.."Hey, just wanted to let you know something you're doing is bothering us"..If you make your point, which sounds legit to me, and he doesn't do anything at that point then shame on him. Gather evidence and go from there with the HOA board.
It's always best to attempt to talk in a direct way before getting anyone else involved. The way homes are zoned down there I can't imagine people wouldn't HAVE to gather up their leaves in bags, there is no way in any of the neighborhoods I had seen in SBR leaf blowing would work unless you abutt a creek or some woods-homes are just too close..Of course the least stressful thing to do is not the cheapest of course, which is to fence him out, they make the best neighbors.
Isn't this why you "upscale suburban subdivision" people LOOOOOVE your HOA's? I'm sure there's a "no leaf debris" clause somewhere in the HOA encyclopedia. Call your favorite board member and complain.
Hi all - thank you - I appreciate your suggestions...
skids929 - This guy appears to be of the religion (I won't mention any denominations here) that if no one sees you doing a bad deed, then it's not a bad deed. You only have to APPEAR to be a good decent person, you don't actually have to BE one. Since he is REAL sneaky and only does this when he thinks we aren't at home, I really don't think talking to him and letting him know it bothers us is going to do any good. My husband already did that in as nice a way possible. Other than getting really nasty and threatening him, which my husband has actually considered, I really don't see him changing his behavior by further talking to him about it. He obviously could care less what we think or what bothers us. During the weeks we were moving in, he actually took our trash bin and filled it with his tree prunings and put it at the curb in front of our house!! He came over to meet us and as he was leaving I asked if he knew who may have taken and used our trash can, and he shamelessly admitted to it! He obviously has boundary issues!! When we bought the house it had two trash bins and a few weeks later we decided to return one to the City so we didn't have him coming onto our property and taking it anymore, and so we didn't have to keep paying an extra monthly fee for it. We even asked him if he wanted it, but he said he just wanted us to keep it and him to be able to use it occasionally! So the City told me to leave it out on Wednesday (garbage day is Monday) and they would come by and pick it up. We come home that night, and whaddya know??? The trash bin was returned back next our house!! He, the neighbor with no boundaries, thought we had left it out on the wrong day and did us a "favor" by moving it back next to the house!! He is really irritating to deal with!! The more I think about it I really think our only option in dealing with him is tall and sturdy fence - I'm thinking a 6' brick wall to match the house. I would definitely like to make it higher but I think the HOA limits the height to 6' !! And I want to have motion-activated cameras installed too...in hindsight I should have entitled this thread more generally "Irritating Neighbors"!! Thanks all!!
Hi all - thank you - I appreciate your suggestions...
skids929 - This guy appears to be of the religion (I won't mention any denominations here) that if no one sees you doing a bad deed, then it's not a bad deed. You only have to APPEAR to be a good decent person, you don't actually have to BE one. Since he is REAL sneaky and only does this when he thinks we aren't at home, I really don't think talking to him and letting him know it bothers us is going to do any good. My husband already did that in as nice a way possible. Other than getting really nasty and threatening him, which my husband has actually considered, I really don't see him changing his behavior by further talking to him about it. He obviously could care less what we think or what bothers us. During the weeks we were moving in, he actually took our trash bin and filled it with his tree prunings and put it at the curb in front of our house!! He came over to meet us and as he was leaving I asked if he knew who may have taken and used our trash can, and he shamelessly admitted to it! He obviously has boundary issues!! When we bought the house it had two trash bins and a few weeks later we decided to return one to the City so we didn't have him coming onto our property and taking it anymore, and so we didn't have to keep paying an extra monthly fee for it. We even asked him if he wanted it, but he said he just wanted us to keep it and him to be able to use it occasionally! So the City told me to leave it out on Wednesday (garbage day is Monday) and they would come by and pick it up. We come home that night, and whaddya know??? The trash bin was returned back next our house!! He, the neighbor with no boundaries, thought we had left it out on the wrong day and did us a "favor" by moving it back next to the house!! He is really irritating to deal with!! The more I think about it I really think our only option in dealing with him is tall and sturdy fence - I'm thinking a 6' brick wall to match the house. I would definitely like to make it higher but I think the HOA limits the height to 6' !! And I want to have motion-activated cameras installed too...in hindsight I should have entitled this thread more generally "Irritating Neighbors"!! Thanks all!!
Sounds like you have already taken the "give em plenty of rope to hang emself with" approach..Go to the HOA..Or better yet build a fence, give yourself two feet of setback and line his side with trash cans he can use at his leisure.
Complain to the HOA- most city codes will not allow you to build a fence or retaining wall to splits you and you neighbor up. We tried that where we live. We have one to the left that tends to allow his childrens snack trash to blow into our yard and tosses weeds into our yard...the other neighbor tends to toss tree limbs and leaves on our driveway as the three large mature mesquite trees that have been there since 1970 provide shade for him and us and are half on his property and half on ours. Yet we get stuck with the trimming bill yearly....as he wouldn't dare pay for that. Now I am not in a HOA- tried that once-didn't work. But that is what they are there for as well. The police would just laugh at you. Otherwise just go back outside and sweep them right back over.
Hi all - thank you - I appreciate your suggestions...
skids929 - This guy appears to be of the religion (I won't mention any denominations here) that if no one sees you doing a bad deed, then it's not a bad deed. You only have to APPEAR to be a good decent person, you don't actually have to BE one. Since he is REAL sneaky and only does this when he thinks we aren't at home, I really don't think talking to him and letting him know it bothers us is going to do any good. My husband already did that in as nice a way possible. Other than getting really nasty and threatening him, which my husband has actually considered, I really don't see him changing his behavior by further talking to him about it. He obviously could care less what we think or what bothers us. During the weeks we were moving in, he actually took our trash bin and filled it with his tree prunings and put it at the curb in front of our house!! He came over to meet us and as he was leaving I asked if he knew who may have taken and used our trash can, and he shamelessly admitted to it! He obviously has boundary issues!! When we bought the house it had two trash bins and a few weeks later we decided to return one to the City so we didn't have him coming onto our property and taking it anymore, and so we didn't have to keep paying an extra monthly fee for it. We even asked him if he wanted it, but he said he just wanted us to keep it and him to be able to use it occasionally! So the City told me to leave it out on Wednesday (garbage day is Monday) and they would come by and pick it up. We come home that night, and whaddya know??? The trash bin was returned back next our house!! He, the neighbor with no boundaries, thought we had left it out on the wrong day and did us a "favor" by moving it back next to the house!! He is really irritating to deal with!! The more I think about it I really think our only option in dealing with him is tall and sturdy fence - I'm thinking a 6' brick wall to match the house. I would definitely like to make it higher but I think the HOA limits the height to 6' !! And I want to have motion-activated cameras installed too...in hindsight I should have entitled this thread more generally "Irritating Neighbors"!! Thanks all!!
YIKES!!!! I'm sorry. And I'm saying that as one of those "religious people". I'd never do that to a neighbor enemy or not. What a tool. Hopefully you did get the extra trash can returned. And if he uses the only 1 you have then I'd take his garbage out and leave it on his front porch w/ a note, "Just returning your items to you. Thanks but we don't need any thing right now".
Pretty sure the HOA and city has codes state one can not allow water or any other debris to flow from ones own property onto anothers. Most do. At this point I doubt the HOA will even do anything about him since it is a neighbor issue and not a neighborhood issue.
Build the fence and put it ON the property line. Do NOT set it back AT ALL!!!! By doing that you are actually transferring over that portion of your property to him over time. If this is the side yard then you CAN built the fence right on the property line. Then his leaves and yard debris will pile up on his yard and he will have to do something about it and can't blow it onto your yard. Bet he will try and blow them out into the alley or street after you put up a fence. I'd be hogtied mad if I found out he was blowing them around the fence if you do put one up. That would take more effort than it's worth.
Bet he did this with the previous owners as well and might be one reason why they sold the house and moved.
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