Neighbour attached noisy shower room to gable end of house

I’m just wondering if anyone has any ideas on this:

A relative of mine has a house in an urban area and which is end of terrace. The gable end of their house forms the back garden wall of an adjacent house.

Without any discussion, their landlord added a shower room to this. There was an old coal house and they seem to have just tiled the bricks of the house, placed a shower tray and an electric shower attached and to the wall.

It has damaged the interior of my relative’s house - water ingress twice, which has caused damage to plaster and paper. They’ve paid to fix it once. They also managed to drill completely through the wall into the room while trying to mount something on the ‘bathroom’ wall.

The shower is also extremely noisy. It’s making the living room unusable. It’s one of those pumped showers. It’s louder than the television. You can’t even make a phone call in the room or it’s on. I assume there’s something wrong with it. It can easily be running for 30 mins!

The landlord doesn’t seem to be easy to reach and the tenant doesn’t know anything about it.

Any ideas?!

Mellor

Does you relative own the house? It’s not really clear as you refer to “their landlord”.

If they own the house, then it’s probably their wall and not a party wall. Which means the owner of the neighbouring property cannot mount anything on the wall or build directly off of it.

On the other hand, if the landlord is your relative’s landlord, then it’s his property and he doesn’t need consent or to discuss it.

The water ingress and the drill coming through is odd. It would be very difficult to drill through an external wall accidentally. Do you know that the wall construction is? You mention brick. Fixing into a brick outer leaf would not cause water to reach the internal space though.

They own the house and it's brick.

The landlord I'm referring to is the person who owns the hose next door. I don't think they've ever lived in it. It's just an investment.

I'm not sure what the construction is but it's late 19th century.

The drill bit that came through was huge and big enough to knock plaster off the wall in the living room! They seem to be allowing the tenant to just do random works.

We've had no response from the property owner or the tenant on this.

I can only assume they've done damage to the surface of the brick in the "bathroom" i.e. they seemed to have possibly chased it to fit wiring and plumbing!!!

We are only theorising as we haven't been able to inspect, it, but from what we can tell they simply built a structure, and directly plastered the bricks, applying tiles and sinking in plumbing.

The electric shower literally sounds like it's in the living room and you can hear conversation directly through the wall. There's something very odd going on and we need to get to the bottom of it ASAP.

We're getting a builder in to try and assess it from our side, but it's going to have to be solved ASAP. We can't really risk something that does on-gong damage to the house and the noise is ridiculous.

Calahonda52

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/27/section/43/enacted/en/html

Mellor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121762907#Comment_121762907

Ah, the age helps. If a Victorian terrace. So it won't be a cavity wall. Potentially single, but most likely double brick solid wall. The water proofing would have been barely there to begin with. Shower against this wall, potentially without proper water proofing would explain it.

The short answer is this is illegal. The wall is a party structure as defined by the act above, but it is entirely owned by your relative. And due to they are liable for making good any damage, including making good the illegal work. They also cannot stop you from access thier land to make good and carry out repairs. And if they refuse to pay, you courts will award you the costs, including professional advice.

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2009/act/27/section/44/enacted/en/html

Best cost of action to is to contact them, and tell they it's your property, they can't build off you wall. They need a separate water proof lining. Request access to insect and get a professional to look at it.