He called over the fence, laughing, basement still flooding, detective. So I said funny he should ask, and I told him the city had two months of my documentation plus the plumbers letter, and an inspector was scheduled to come read the grading and drainage Thursday.
Because I had stopped talking and started documenting. Photos of the pooling, videos of the runoff crossing the property line, the time of day, twice a day, for two months. I had a plumber note the source in writing. And I read up, there are actual rules about directing your drainage onto a neighbors property.
For two years the only thing I had lacked was proof of the source, and the moment I had two months of dated runoff videos and a plumbers letter naming where the water came from, the man blaming the weather became a documented drainage case with an inspector on the way.
He was charming and I was quiet, so the street had believed him, and his wife asked me how my little water theory was going, right in front of others. But a plumbers letter is not a theory, and a grading inspection does not read personality.
I did not argue over the fence. I said, the city has two months of documentation and a letter from a plumber naming your sprinklers as the source. An inspector reads the grading Thursday. I have a crack in my foundation that was not there two years ago. You can call me detective, but the city is going to read where your water goes now.
The documentation was the documentation. There is no blaming-the-weather-ing your way out of two months of runoff video crossing the line and a plumbers letter.
The city did what my one gentle mention never could. The inspector confirmed the drainage was being directed onto my property, and the man was ordered to correct his grading and redirect the runoff onto his own land, away from my foundation.
He regraded that side of his yard and put in a drain that carries the water off his own property. The pooling against my wall stopped. I got the foundation crack sealed once the water was gone, and it has stayed dry through every rain since.
He waters his lawn like anyone; he just keeps his water on his own side now. Two years of a wet foundation ended not with a fight over the fence, but with two months of quiet video and a plumbers letter, and it turned out the man blaming the weather was just the neighbor whose sprinklers were cracking my house.