My neighbour and I have a concrete section double garage with a concrete party partition wall.

These garages are quite small and I wish to extend mine, however it seems to me that the only way to do it is to disasemble my bit and seal off his half then build a new garage independantly.

Does anyone have any advice on how to handle this both legally and socially. By that I mean we get on pretty well with them, he's a bit of a petrol head himself so I don't want to spoil our relationship, but I really want a bigger garage and on this occasion I dont really want to comprimise.

You can demolish your garage as long as you reinstate the roof and dividing wall to building standards, the dividing wall is still concidered a party wall and you and he own it together.
Get proper plans of what you propose to do, talk to him at all stages befor you start and make sure he is informed when there will be dust or mess that will get in his garage and on his belongings. It may be that you have to offer short term storage.

You need to tell him exactly what you want to do, how it is going to be done and when you want to do it.

Keep a friendly and concerned dialog going and you should keep the neigbours as friends.

If he's a petrol head perhaps what he also hankers for is a decent garage space aswell so there might be a chance to you going halves and ending up with the same type of garage but bigger on both sides!

I would consider both of the above to be excellent advice.

Possible silly suggestion

If as said above he is also a petrol head would it be possible for one of you to keep the existing garage but move it over and reinsate it as a double garage and the other build a fresh one. Whoever keeps the original woul "buy" the other half and the seller then has some cash towards his new garage.

The other possibility is that these things are usually modular and are made up of panels, perhaps you could insert a couple more panels and make it wider/longer. Come to think of it a friend of mine has a sectional concrete garage that has been made longer with conventional brickwork.

Hope this helps

Regards

Frank

Party walls are a bit of complexity when it comes to extending any building - a big pitfall if you don't get on with your neighbour.

Best thing to do is bring the idea up in conversation and see if he either minds you extending or may even take the chance of extending himjself (so you'll both get a slightly cheaper bill for it too).

Usually, you find that it's not a major problem if you get on with each other.

Good info will probably be available at www.rics.org

I like the moving it over idea.

If he is up for it (obviously you need a chat about it) then offer it to him for free as long as he does the foundation pad, then he's getting the space for free and it was only scrap to you anyway.

Build a block built one for yourself, its cheaper and much better!

Or... If you have room behind your garage, put a roller door in the end, or just a timber framed hole, and build a workshop on the back end of your garage.

I bet he would like a decent workshop too... TALK to your neighbour, keep it calm, quiet, objective, Discuss, DONT argue.

Be prepared to compromise or accomodate him, and see how it goes.

Thanks for all the replies

Although he would like to extend his garage as he's just bought a weekend car and is going to have to tinker with it, he doesn't have the cash to do it just now.

Has given me some points to think about.

cheers all

Geoff