What’s worse than bad neighbors is a bad construction crew.

In today’s story, an upstairs neighbor has some renovations done that cause nothing but problems for the downstairs neighbor.

We’re talking noise, flooding and now a pipe on the outside of the wall that shouldn’t even be there.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA if I refuse to let my neighbour run a water pipe up my wall?

I live in a ground floor unit of a strata managed building.

11 years, no issues.

It’s not ideal but my upstairs neighbor’s water isolation tap is in my private courtyard, but I have always given access to previous owners.

New neighbour bought the unit above me a couple of months ago.

She wanted to do bathroom and kitchen renovations.

She gave me about 12 hours notice that it would be “noisy” but didn’t mention the water.

Next morning, her builder starts cutting the pipes without checking that her water was turned off.

My second bedroom and bathroom was flooded.

Have only now just settled the insurance claim as he admitted fault.

There was another problem.

About a week after that, the Owners Corp asked me for them to access the isolation tap so they could do plumbing works.

I wasn’t paying attention to what they were doing as I was busy with family, but after they left I discovered they’d placed a long copper pipe up the middle of my wall (the pipes were previously all internal).

I complained, and the OC issued a breach notice to remove it within 28 days.

He rejected the OC’s idea of a compromise.

They continued with their renovations, and on day 25 asked if they could move the pipe to run along the bottom of my wall instead – less noticeable.

I rejected that also.

My reasoning was the OC plumber had told me there would have been an easy solution that didn’t involve my property if they weren’t such “cowboys” and gutted everything – his words.

He feels like the problem is all on the OC.

Long story short, she got lawyers involved to send myself and OC a letter refusing to remove the pipe and would take us to VCAT in the matter if we tried to.

They are now saying it’s too late to put it back the way it was and implement the easy solution and that it would cost them $10k to pull everything out.

AITA if I think this is a “them” problem and not a “me” problem? I don’t owe this woman anything.

I was only dragged into this because her tradies were incompetent.

I worked my arse off to save to buy myself my own safe space as an autistic adult, and she has come in and blown it to smithereens by flooding my unit, deceiving me and violating my safe space.

It definitely seems like the OC messed up and now wants to get out of fixing it correctly.

It would’ve been better just to do it right the first time.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader would go to court.

Here’s another vote for going to court.

The neighbor’s “cowboys” did a lot of damage.

He is not being unreasonable.

The contractor is to blame.

The contractor should fix the problems he caused, including the exterior pipe.

That seems like common sense.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.