Neighbor Overwatering the Lawn

As the real estate saying goes, you can choose your home location, but you can’t choose your neighbors. And one of the things that can get frustrating very quickly is when a neighbor doesn’t understand the need to control his or her watering next door and the drainage starts to move into your lawn. Overwatering can be a fast path to a dead lawn and a mud pit for landscaping, but many times the water source is deep in a neighbor’s property and cannot be controlled by the affected. According to the DePaulo Agency, there’s a couple of ways to handle this situation in Scotia, NY.

The easiest and simplest way is to basically ask the neighbor to cut down on the water, showing him or her what’s going on with the draining. If they don’t cooperate, the second approach is to put in the drainage that takes the water away from your lawn and out to the street. No matter how much they water, it never piles up in your lawn as a result. However, if you’re not inclined to spend any money on the matter, you could report the matter to a homeowner’s association as a complaint, if one applies in your neighborhood. Absent an HOA, the city might be an option with regards to a code violation that the city handles and follows up on, but these are rare.

Finally, a legal approach in the Scotia, NY courtroom may be the ultimate solution, filing a nuisance claim against your neighbor when just about every other avenue has been tried and the damage continues. In these situations, the case needs to be a strong situation where the average person would agree the neighbor is out of control and inconsiderate to just about anyone in the same situation. Fortunately, these neighbor problems rarely get to this level. The staff and the DePaulo Agency can easily help guide a homeowner client before things ever get to this level and would be happy to point out alternatives for a better solution where possible.