Gas fire vent onto neighbour's drive.

[LoungeLizard]

There are 2 detached houses side by side.  Both houses have their own drive (each leading to a garage set back behind the house) on the right-hand side of each house.

The owner of the right-hand house has a downstairs lounge on the left of his house such that the lounge's exterior wall has the left-hand house's drive running all the way along it, with nothing to separate them.  In other words, if the right-hand house-owner were to bash through his wall at any point then he would be on the left-hand house-owner's drive.

13 years ago, the right-hand house-owner asked the left-hand house owner (orally) if he could put a gas-fire flue through his wall such that it protruded (for less than 2 inches) onto the drive of the left-hand house owner.  The left-hand house owner agreed (orally), and never protested for that 13 years.

But, 13 years later, the left-hand house-owner wants to sell his house, and has been advised that the the right-hand house owner is trespassing on his drive with the flue; and that this might threaten the sale.  So he asks the right-hand house-owner to remove the flue.

The right-hand owner is reluctant, because there is no chimney and no other easy way to vent the gas-fire.  The drive is quite narrow, so 2 inches of flue is small but significant.  Also, the flue should have a mesh-guard of about another couple of inches, which is not there.

Comments, please, anyone?

[zmudge]

This is in essence a boundary dispute which blocks the sale of both houses, not just the one. No permanent rights have been acquired by the gas flue property, who should now immediately do what is in fact the rather trivial work of re-routing the flue to vent within his own property and thank the other owner profusely for the 13 years of tolerance. The other owner does have the legal right under self-help to remove the projection and to take whatever other steps may be necessary to stop the venting of obnoxious flue gases on to his property. Should a sale be lost and the matter go legal the loser will be at least �60,000 worse off at the end, probably nearer �100,000.