View Single Post
  #10   Report Post  
Old 08-12-2005, 03:54 PM posted to rec.gardens
Doug Kanter
 
Posts: n/a
Default Throwing Snow In Neighbors Yard? Illegal? LONG!!


"bigjon" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 01:23:13 -0500, MICHELLE H. wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I am new here and am looking for some help or information please.
Unfortunately, I do not live in the country, but I wish I did, I hate
the city. If I could afford it, I would move to the country and away
from all the hustle-bustle, traffic, and people.

I found this group when I was doing a search at Google for "problem
neighbors" so I guess I will post my problem here. I live in a "old"
residential part of the city where the homes in the neighborhood are all
right next to one another. The homes are probably about 30 feet from one
another. Well as you guessed it, my problem is with one of my neighbors.

My neighbor who lives to the right of me is the problem. His driveway is
on the right side of my home where the grassy area is ( my driveway is
on the the left side of my house ). His driveway is about 12 feet wide,
then he has 2 feet of ( grass ) property line, and the rest of the yard
to my house is my property.

On my grassy area, I have some flowers, rose bushes, 2 small dwarf
Alberta trees, a small pine tree and another small decorative tree. One
of the things that really angers me is that I take alot of pride and do
alot of hard work to keep my yard clean and looking nice, and he knows
this because he is always watching me all the time, because he is always
home, 24 hours a day, because he is collecting disability income from
the government because of is "bad back".

Anyway one of the things he does is he stands out on his small back
porch about every ten minutes and smokes his white Marlboro Lights, and
when he gets done, he throws his cigarette butts over into my yard!!! I
will go to bed at nightime, and wake up the next morning and go outside
to water my plants and flowers and there will be like 7 white smoke
butts on my lawn. WHY can't he throw them in his backyard?? WHY can't he
put them in a jar or a bucket?? NO, he throws them in my yard. I usually
pick up the stupid cig. butts and throw them away but what I did a few
weeks ago was start counting how many cig. butts he is throwing into my
yard. I started picking them up on Monday all the way to Sunday. One
week there was 63 in my yard. The next week there were 57, and another
week there were 65. So basically he is throwing about 60 cig. butts a
week into MY yard, not to mention his cigarette wrappers as well!!!

Now I doubt that there is anykind of law to prevent him from doing this,
but hopefully there is for my next question. In the winter he uses his
snowblower and blows all the snow from his driveway into my yard. He
runs the snowblower so high that snow hits the side of my house and my
windows. If we have a big snowstorm, all the snow in my yard, plus his
from his driveway, will bury my basement windows, my flowers, and my two
small dwarf Alberta Spruce trees. I can't understand WHY he has to throw
the snow over into my yard?? WHY can't he blow the snow down his
driveway and into his backyard??

He aims the snowblower toward my home and blows the snow into my yard,
onto my freshly shoveled front stairs, and my freshly shoveled front
sidewalk, where if someone were to fall down in front of my home, I
would be sued because of HIS SNOW!!!

Last year he was blowing the snow over into my yard, and a rock from his
driveway shot out from his snowblower and hit the side of my house!!
Now, I have TRIED to be NICE and have talked to him about this. In the
summer, he complained to me that the branches on my pine tree and my
flowering pear tree were growing toward his driveway, and that he didn't
want them to scratch his mini-van and pickup truck. So I decided to be
nice and I trimmed the branches growing toward his driveway nice and
short so that they were out of his way and there were no more problems.

So the other day when we got 4 inches of snow, he was out there bright
and early blowing the snow into my yard. So I went out there and NICELY
asked him WHY he has to blow the snow into my yard and against my house,
and he said "because he wants to clear his driveway, and doesn't want to
walk in the snow". So then I told him that I don't want him to blow the
snow into my yard and against my house because last year a rock came
flying out from his snowblower and hit the side of my house, and I don't
want to get any broken windows or holes in my new vinyl siding. So then
he said "its only snow, it'll melt, what are you gonna do about it?" So
instead of losing my temper and doing something that I would regret, I
walked away.

So, it was okay when he complained about my trees branches, I was the
nice person and trimmed them right up for him, but when I aksed him to
NOT throw snow into my yard, he was a total JERK about it.

So does anyone know if there are any laws what-so-ever about snowblowing
snow into someone elses yard??

Thanks for reading all this and listening to me vent out my frustration,
and for any info. you might be able to give me.

P.S.
Alot of you are probably thinking why I don't just put up a fence. I
already got a few estimates LAST SPRING and because the property line is
long on the sides of our homes it will be $1700 dollars to install a 6
foot wooden stockade fence right down the property line and
unfortunately I don't have an extra $1700 for a fence right now, but
when I do get it, you can bet there will be one going up. But for now,
WHAT can I do??

Thanks!!


What he is doing is not strictly illegal, but very antisocial.
You can ignore it and get a life, or fight fire with fire.

Get yourself a video recorder and video his physical movements (not
through
the windows of his property, but him in his yard. Once you have at least
three accounts of his exertions, turn the tapes and a covering ("anon" if
you want) letter to the relevant authority for fraudulent disability
payments.

Or, you can collect up those butts and return them to his porch on a daily
basis. He will soon get fed up picking them all up. Get yourself a sno
blower (or a shovel and a few hours) and send the snow back. Do everything
he does back to him - if it's ok in his mind for him to do it, it should
be
ok for you to do it.

Of course, this will antagonise him and you will be at war....
not much fun, I can tell you.


I suppose she could also hire someone with a plow, and have an eight foot
wall of snow moved into his driveway.