North Van family blames vacant neighbouring house for flooding

A family in North Vancouver says their home is being flooded by their neighbours’ sprinklers. The problem? There’s no one home to turn them off.

“So the whole backyard was like a swamp,” says Daniel Bazin, who’s the son of the elderly couple who owns the home.

He says the neighbours installed the automatic irrigation system about a year ago but that immediately after water started pouring in through his parents’ retaining wall.

Their home began collecting water below.

But Bazin says trying to get a hold of the neighbours has been close to impossible.

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He says the home is usually cared for by someone else to make it look like there’s someone living there, so they’ve had no luck trying to reach them.

The family contacted the District of North Vancouver to see if they could help.

“If it’s something we can control with our pipes, or if it’s the irrigation system that can be turned off then we can take some action,” says Mairi Welman with the District of North Vancouver.

“But if it’s beyond that we don’t have the right to go into private property and start doing things.”

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Staff was sent to investigate to make sure that it wasn’t a district-owned problem. But they said all of the pipes and drainage were in good working order.

Since there was nothing the district could do, Bazin helped his two elder parents build a ditch to prevent the water from overflowing into the house.

But every morning, the sprinklers come on at 5 a.m.

“It’s been leaving messages, and leaving messages, and leaving messages. So I almost felt to the point of ‘I’m just getting ignored here.'” says Bazin.

With files from Ted Chernecki