Party Wall Appointment
Surbiton, London KT6
(Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames)
Close to Teddington and Kingston-upon-Thames. Within the catchment of our Ealing office.
Background: The works required excavation for foundations within 3 m of the adjoining owner's property and below the level of the adjoining owner's foundations. The building owner also wanted to replace the boundary wall with the flank wall of his extension. The front extension was proposed to abut the wall of one of the adjoining owners.
We were appointed by the building owner. The adjoining owner did not wish to appoint the building owner's Surveyor as Agreed Surveyor and instead appointed his own Surveyor.
There was one adjoining owner to the works.
The works involved the re-development of a site whilst retaining some of the existing structure.
Conclusion:
The works involved the re-development of a existing single-storey structure into two-storey flats. Whilst we pulled out all the stops to progress the party wall agreement as fast as possible, the building owner was having his own issues with his design team which resulted in the scope of the proposed building works evolving throughout the process.
Midway through the design process, the building owner realised that his drainage works would need to run alongside the party fence wall separating him and the adjoining owner. This boundary wall was assumed to be the same age as the building and so likely built on very shallow foundations such that the excavation works to run the new drainage would likely undermine the wall's foundations.
After considering various alternatives, we advised the building owner of his rights under Section 2(2)b) of the Party Wall Act, to demolish and rebuild a Party Fence Wall. Hence, the revised proposal was to demolish the wall, preserving the original brickwork, excavate for the new drainage run and re-build the wall on new deeper foundations using the original brickwork.
Other matters dealt with by the Party Wall Award were: flashing at the abutment of the building owner's wall and the adjoining owner's wall and ensuring that the foundation design was tweaked to show that there would be no encroachment of new footings onto the existing adjoining owner's footings.