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My property is at the bottom of a slope and I have three properties above that dump copious amounts of water on our lot.
I spent a couple of thousand installing a drainage system that takes most of what gets dumped and brings it reasonably well down to the bottom of our lot and onto the street and into the city drainage system.
Your money and time would probably be better spent on something like this than lawyers and neighbor fights.
Another nearby neighbor made a lot of complaints and noises about water coming in on their lot. Once they found they were getting nowhere, they did the same as us and appear to have fixed their problem too.
We used to live on a compound slope, where the house behind us was up slope, as were our neighbors to the north. The ones to the south, down slope, had a poured concrete retaining wall which dammed the run off.
When the glaciers retreated in April we would have a virtual moat around the house with ducks and all.
I took pictures from the 2nd floor where the water accumulated and made "dry creek beds" where the water was and added soil to encourage flow towards them. They only needed to be 8 inches down and 18" wide to start off with. I got out there in the rain with a hoe once the ponds formed and "lead" the water where I wanted it to go. I was a little worried about drunks <g> stepping in the trenches and hurting themselves but they soon eroded to have very gradual banks and looked natural.
I think this is easier than building up terrain to be higher than the neighbors, although there would be an evil satisfaction to creating a dam in the trash filled creek in your one neighbors yard, until it breaches that is
With the right rocks and ground cover, the "dry creek bed" can be made to look pretty appealing, and is less lawn to cut.
Regards,
Dave
Quote:
Originally Posted by ma91pmh
My property is at the bottom of a slope and I have three properties above that dump copious amounts of water on our lot.
I spent a couple of thousand installing a drainage system that takes most of what gets dumped and brings it reasonably well down to the bottom of our lot and onto the street and into the city drainage system.
Your money and time would probably be better spent on something like this than lawyers and neighbor fights.
Another nearby neighbor made a lot of complaints and noises about water coming in on their lot. Once they found they were getting nowhere, they did the same as us and appear to have fixed their problem too.
As a former HOA president: read your covenant carefully. Find every angle you can play in it to put pressure on you neighbors. Make an unmitigated a** of yourself with the HOA, forcing them to act on your complaints. If you can convince your HOA that this is a "communal" problem they might even pay for a solution (cooperation with which they might be able to compel per the covenant).
Find an attorney and discuss ways to pressure them.
Play the long game and you will win.
As far as them disliking you, who cares? By their inaction, they already have contempt for you. If lots of water was draining from my property to my neighbors, I would square that away immediately (out of shame). Consider what it means that they did not follow this course.
If your HOA has ever had the power to do something about this (and it sounds like they have) then that means they could use automatic fines as the framework for compelling ongoing compliance. They just need to build up the legal framework for doing so (i.e. a trail of documentation).
Well, the line between private (as in not legitimate use of community resources) versus communal (as in legitimate use of community resources) is a little fuzzy. Suppose you had a 100 house neighborhood and 75 of them were affected by some problem (e.g. suppose there was some drainage issue) that was external in the sense that, for each household involved, the problem did not either begin or end or both within their property. I think it would not be a tough sell that this could be an HOA level problem that should be be collectively addressed. At the other end of the spectrum you might have one household with a problem that begins and ends on their property. That is clearly not a community issue and does not merit community resources. Where is the dividing mark between community issue (i.e. possibly justifying community resources via the HOA) and non-community issue on that continuum? Well, that is a bit of a grey area, and hence a bit discretionary for the board. Hence my use of the word "convince". There were several times we debated this exact issue when I was involved.
Not a gray area for me at all. If it's not on HOA-owned property, and isn't otherwise a responsibility placed on the HOA by the declarations filed by the developer, it's not an HOA issue.
I am genuinely curious: have you ever served on an HOA board? Or been an HOA president? The clarity and certitude you are asserting (which you are certainly entitled to do) almost always evaporates once you are part of the HOA administration and facing the limits of covenants (their language is often fuzzy, they do not define black and white bounds in the fashion you prefer, etc.) and political realities an HOA faces externally (probably many in my community would agree with you; many would not) and internally (I guarantee you some on the board would probably disagree with you). I'm not trying to criticize you: your views are your right. I'm just saying that while lots of people (myself included, by the way) talk in absolutes like that before their tenure on the HOA admin, few do afterwards. At least in my experience.
Although I found the HOA experience a little exhausting (it is basically about the management of conflict and uncertainty on several levels) I am glad I did it. On a microcosm sort of level, it taught me a lot about what it means to govern in our society.
I am genuinely curious: have you ever served on an HOA board? Or been an HOA president?
Yes, and yes. And it's part of the reason I draw such a bright line between HOA and non-HOA matters. I'm not getting sucked into private property disputes.
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