Blog
Neighbour demolishing their garage Party Wall Matters
Friday 17th February 2023
Carl O'Boyle BSc MRICS FCIOB MFPWS
What should I be worried about? If a neighbour serves me a Party Wall notice regarding the demolition of their garage.
We at Tayross associates, chartered, Party Wall and Building Surveyors. Often get involved with Party Wall matters relating to the demolition of adjoining garages shared by neighbours.
One thing to be concerned about is that a lot of garage roofs have asbestos content. This needs to be carefully considered, how the asbestos is safely to be removed and disposed of. Such as not cutting it into pieces, wetting during removal, bagging of contents into sealed polythene, taking to a registered council asbestos dump.
Another concern is most garage walls shared by neighbours are only a half brick thick. One has to be concerned about how this wall when it is exposed and is to be weathered. We normally recommend several different ways of doing this depending which one suits a particular situation.
The other thing to be concerned about is when they come to break out the concrete slab. This can destabilise your - the neighbours garage or adjoining buildings. Therefore we recommend a method statement employing a special wet cutting diamond saw plant-by cutting out a 300 mm reduced zone through the full thickness of the concrete and down to the hard-core, near to the shared wall. This helps reduce the vibration when it comes to breaking out the slab-we recommend that the slab is pulled out rather than broken out.
