spartacus

I would have thought that the fence line marks the boundary of your two properties, the fence being a shared asset. If the retaining wall sits to one side of that boundary then it's the responsibility of that person.

Treated timber retainers are the cheapest, as are hardwood posts with treated palings for fencing.

I've just googled and come up with this . . . might be useful.

http://www.justanswer.com/australian...ning-wall.html

DadAgain

yeah - well years ago when the fence was upright it woudl have been plumb vertical above the retaining wall i.e. run straight edge against a fence paling and it'd be also against the timber sleepers.

That said - NOW if you drop a plumb line from the top of the fence the retaining wall is between 6" and 3ft to her side of wherethe plumb line would drop.

Obviously the retaining wall is ON the boundary and therefore theres no precendent in terms of location to determine ownership.

As far as I can tell there are 2 other factors that determine ownership of a retaining wall:

1) Who built first?: If one property were built first and built the retaining wall, then that property is responsible for its ongoing maintenance.

I know when our house was built - 8 years before we moved in. I'm sure hers was built at roughly the same time (i.e. a decade or so before she moved in) - but as to whos builder actually constructed the wall and whos property was the first to be developed, there may be no way of telling....


2) Who benefits?: If the wall is clearly benefitting the 'lower' property (i.e. maintaining a 'cut') then it could be deemed to be theirs. If the wall is benefitting the 'upper' property (i.e. maintaining a 'fill') then it could be deemed to be theirs. In our case its both: If the wall werent there our yard would be inundated by earth from her side - and a pile of rubble from her collapsed house that woudl have suffered from terrible subsidence. So once again its tough to make a clear call.

This is why my 'layman' estimate is that the wall might be shared - but as I've stated many times, I'm trying to get clarification on that issue from Brisbane City Council.

fish.01

Now that we are all so involved will you be running tours this week so we can come and see the evidence for ourselves ?

spartacus

You have my sympathy, as I know what an absolute ****on fences can cause between neighbours. We live in new house on a new estate and still managed to fall out with ours on the basis that they felt they should've been consulted more over the 'design' I chose when I built it, more than a year before they took ownership of their site and started their build.

HelenTD

These are the sort of building blocks I was thinking about http://www.boral.com.au/brochures/or...pany=Retaining Walls&product=RetainingWalls&subsite=&br_code=IBQL D1&scr=4 (includes a handy calculator).

moneypenny20

Shame they can't spell.

LouiseR

You have some strange neighbours there!

spartacus

One kiwi one saffa . . . queer ****ers both.

moneypenny20

We don't have any fences, none of us have ever seen the need. However we have a new neighbour so who knows if he'll want to put something up. I'm damned if we're going to go halves though. Fencing just under two acres doesn't sound my idea of a good plan.

LouiseR

Ah I see!

DadAgain

Not sure about tours - but I might be persuaded to post a bunch of photos (I need to take a few for 'documentation' purposes anyway!)



BTW: It seems the wife has been enquiring about this too: http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/foru...ic=924977&st=0. Interesting that on a forum dominated by mothers there seems to be none of this "You heartless bastard - why dont you just buy the poor woman a new fence out of the goodness of your heart instead of hunting her down and trying to run her out of town?" attitude

spartacus

Not to worry, I've just registered on 'essentailbaby.com.au', tell your wife she can expect a 'you heartless bastard' post any minute now.

Dreamy

I don't know - I've just read through the thread and there pretty much seemed to be a representative echo of the posts on here.

Perhaps, deep down, you feel like you're being a heartless bastard so there's a bit of projection going on?

spartacus

You've been watching way too much 'Dr Phil' . . .

moneypenny20

Aggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh