Have you tried throwing stones?

Is the neighbour giving gifts of veg to the council?

I’d almost forgotten about this rather good thread – worth a read

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/my-bloody-allotment-is-being-taken-over/

Well I contacted the council and did some serious digging, turns out that he is the exfinance director and was given the allotment a far few years ago after a particularly nasty incident which meant that he had to move house, whilst I feel sorry for the fella he is being a complete arse now, I’m not going to give up my family plot as I’m committed to it working, why the hell should I just because he wants to oust me?

People tend not to draw random lines.

Unless they’re tring to maximise the amount of plots that they can fit in a newbuild estate with all curved roads. You can end up with some oddly shaped and unevenly distributed gardens as a result.

I live in a street which was basically a series of Victorian builds which extended way from the main part of the town.
Unless they were built as a terrace or a pair of semi detached houses then there are no two the same in the entire street. It’s a hotch-potch of styles, sizes and plots.
There is no real discernable logic to the spacing of boundaries between them either.
This organic style of impromptu town planning is very common.

I’d almost forgotten about this rather good thread – worth a read

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/my-bloody-allotment-is-being-taken-over/

As with many STW threads, the best way to read it is read the first page, the last page, and then just imagine what happened in the pages in between:)

Sneak out in the middle of the night,
Move all the other posts so squinty post is now in line….

Offer to help , then query which post is squinty 🤔

Or, failing that just help out moving 1 post,
You appear helpful, but all along you really just checking new alignment

No one’s asked for pics or a Google Map satellite shot?

No one’s asked for pics or a Google Map satellite shot?

No need to ask. He forgot to tick the box about valuing privacy today so it is all in his profile

Resolution

We had a chat

We put a bit of string up that we are both happy with. The fence is a foot out in the worst bit.

It is my problem, so I started to move the offending fence posts. The reason they are in squint is there is lumps of concrete where the posts should be.

So that will be a right pain in the back shifting them.

He’s happy I’m going to sort it.

It’s all amicable.

I’ve got a fun 1/2 of digging due to some previous person doing a quick and squint job. Ho him. Could be worse.

Any suggestions for getting concrete fence posts out that are less hard than smashing them up with a pick axe?

Have to wonder why this wasn’t resolved at time up fence going up!

I guess who ever put the fence up couldn’t be bothered to do it right! The fence replaced some that was fully rotted, apparently.

So it probably looked better. It’s not till you look out your window at something that’s squint for years you decide to do something about it. The rest of the garden is immaculate. I guess moving the fence is the final price in the perfect puzzle.

SDS drill and chisel will do the job albeit slowly. Unless either of you have an engine crane and plates to lay it on.

I’ve got a fun 1/2 of digging due to some previous person doing a quick and squint job. Ho him. Could be worse.

Any suggestions for getting concrete fence posts out that are less hard than smashing them up with a pick axe?

Had a similar issue with the fence at the bottom of my garden. Too much of a pain to try to dig them out, my mate and I just dug new holes, (enough of a pain because of the nature of the ground), put in new posts and horizontal timbers, then featherboarded right across, with sacrificial weather boards along the bottom. So much easier than fannying around with panels anyway.

How big is your garden? 1ft out of a skinny little town garden is a bigger deal than 1 ft out of half an acre. Plus agree with earlier comments – the line on your deeds is an indication of where the boundary is and not intended to be absolutely accurate. As others have said depending on how good the drawing is the line itself is often thicker than 1ft to scale. We bought a barn to convert, with lines indicating what was our garden behind, drawn with what appeared to be a child’s felt tip and to scale the line was nearly a metre wide!

Why’s it your problem out of interest? If he wants to sort it and has time, now you’ve agreed I’d let him do the hard work!

Why’s it your problem out of interest? If he wants to sort it and has time, now you’ve agreed I’d let him do the hard work!

I was wondering that also. He does seem to have pulled your pants down somewhat, do you not have a dog?

After five years of not caring he suddenly wants work doing to reclaim what is currently a chunk of your garden, are you not being generous and amenable simply by not objecting to him cracking on with it?

Just to get a sense of the area of the land we are talking about, what is the area in bummed dogs and buried wives? I think I’d start to give a toss at about one wife and 3 bummed dogs.

is his wife fit? what about his dog?

Just when Id started to worry about my age, fast developing curmudgeonly attitude, propensity to ride what is basically a touring bike thats been given a trendier name, and STW forum not being as funny as in the past, a thread like this comes along and the whole world seems slightly brighter.

Nice work all.

As with many STW threads, the best way to read it is read the first page, the last page, and then just imagine what happened in the pages in between:)

was funny

Get him to dig out the concrete if he is that bothered about it.

Why does he need the extra land now after 5 years?

Is he planning on selling the house or is he wanting to build a massive extention and he needs the extra 1ft so he can build right up to the boarder and still get round?

At least make him dig out the concrete body!

Ps you sound like a great neighbour!

I thought he had spare time and he was going to do it?

Why does he need the extra land now after 5 years?

Perhaps he just wants a straight fence and his own land back?

As he’s in building ask him to get a breaker. You’re doing him a favour putting it right, it’d be fair for him to help especially if he’s got time on his hands.

How big is the garden, not massive, not tiny.

The bit in question is triangle shape that’s caused by 3 fence posts in the wrong place – dodging the old concrete bases.

I can’t be much more than 1m square and will make no difference to me.

I though he had spare time and was going to do it. I was wrong! It is on my side, it is my problem now. It will need doing eventually. For the sake of avoiding middle class tears of regret ( I am totally adding that to my every day chat) I might as well do it soon. Also I have now said I will so I’m definitely doing it.

You can see the squint fence out of their house. Their garden has been getting neater and nicer for 3 years. I guess it’s the last thing on the list. The rest of the garden now looks like something out a magazine spread with perfect verges, dead straight grass and other things that look hard work.

That breaker looks ideal. I’ll suggest it to him. He has (I think) offered to help.

He has (I think) offered to help.

When my fence went down in the wind a year of so back (posts on my side) my neighbour stepped in to help and to be fair did most of the breaking up of the concrete so we could bury the new post. Mostly manual and a LOT of hard work to break it up it would have taken a hell of a lot longer on my own, hopefully your neighbour is as handy as mine!

Any suggestions for getting concrete fence posts out that are less hard than smashing them up with a pick axe?

I redid a bit of fence a few years ago and mostly managed to dodge the buried concrete* but there was one post/concrete lump which due to the location I absolutely had to get out.

Breaking it up (by hand) was a non-starter.

I ended up extracting it by using another fence post as a lever, and basically levering it out of the ground; having first dug away the soil on top of the concrete of course. Still a bit of a ball-ache, but possibly a useful technique if you don’t manage to get hold of a breaker.

* don’t worry, I did this by shifting the post position along the line of the fence; so there will be no STW thread in 15 years time talking about some bloody idiot who did a quick bodge job 20 years ago and now my neighbor wants a foot of my garden**

** although given this thread has been fun, maybe that’s a bit of a shame. Makes you think, eh?

Depending how big and firm the concrete is and what it’s made of in terms of ballast it might be easier to make a fencepost sized hole in the concete…

Having a not dissimilar experience our ballast is chert and a right pain and the “old fence post” turned out to be a whole path… ideally would have been removed but …

i removed the old lumps of concrete by digging down with the post hole bar on both sdies until i could get my hand under. put a 5 tonne strope under it , cinched it , attached it to the land rover recovery point, low box 2nd gear and drove forward…… some of those concrete blocks boulders and fence posts were a fair size and tore up some huge parts of the ground…. but it certainly cut down on the manual labout.

Pardon moi!

just you’re all missing the point, when OP could just buy the pirate’s house instead of messing about with sausages & bumming

unless he’s that way inclined

Any suggestions for getting concrete fence posts out that are less hard than smashing them up with a pick axe?

trinitrotoluene (also handy if the situation later escalates)

Any suggestions for getting concrete fence posts out that are less hard than smashing them up with a pick axe?

Oh oh…. I know this one – is it a tractor?

Seriously those things are very heavy and you can’t smash them as they have reinforcing bars through them.
I had to remove two and luckily had a big tractor with which to pull them. Getting them from the ground into the skip on my own required hydraulics.

Well that’s all finished now.

It’s still squint but the neighbor gave me a hand and held the posts while I postcreated them.

He said he’s happy, his missus said thanks- the only positive thing I’ve heard her say in 3 years- mostly I’ve avoided talking to her!

Try to be as tactful as possible.

Say that you want to double check where the correct boundry line should be. If either of you come to sell, and the fence is in the wrong place (now, or after his suggested rebuild), then complications could arise for all involved.

https://www.gov.uk/your-property-boundaries/apply-exact-boundary-determined

Drawing the line on boundaries

https://www.gov.uk/your-property-boundaries

All that malarkey and it’s still pissed?

Well this has brightened the morning. I take it you used a banana as a straight edge? 🤣

**** me, how bad was it before????

I suggest you just move the post one m the other way to avoid the concrete, wait 3 years or so and then just ask for it back

The fence has been moved. The time for advice was a month ago. Do people not read the threads before posting?

Advice on making it official now, to ease any future ‘selling’ issues is wise.

Do people not read the threads before posting?

You must be new here. Welcome to STW 🤣