Should my neighbour serve me a party wall notice

[DavidA1982]

Thanks. I took it from your comments up thread that the neighbour has a clear claim if I damage his house. I guess the neighbours home insurance would cover the cost in the first instance?

This is of real concern to me. We are proposing to do work that has very little chance of damaging their house, but in a few months they are knocking their garage down and building right up to the boundary, about 700mm from our house for a distance of about 7m. Their foundations will likely be at least 500mm deeper than ours. I don't want to prevent them doing the work or making life hard for them because they have been great with us, but I do want to know who will be encouraging them to take precautions; and, ultimately, who will pay for any damage caused.

 

[motorbiking]

Builder/architect is fobbing the OP off, as he has no knowledge of how deep the house footings are unless he's done a survey. I issued a party wall notice to my neighbour when I did my extension on the basis that I was having a lot of structural work done and my pad footings would likely go deeper than his house given that both our houses where built in the 20s (mine) and later 30s his. Chances are they didn't go more than about 2 foot down.

Interestingly my architect didn't raise the need for PWA agreement either until I asked about it. I suspect the neighbour's architect has realised its an oversight. Its building control who decide how deep footings go, in the absence of structural designs (which might be on the plans).

within 3M its this:

within 6M its this