I finally was able to contact the city and they have set up an inspection. They should be able to tell me what can and cannot be done. I've kind of combined all the ideas I've recieved into one and I think this will work: 1 - armour stone retaining wall around yard. 2 - 6" culvurt pipe for stormwater drainage from surrounding swale 3 - weeping tile behind wall to enable drainage from neighbors yards 4 - weeping tile in front of wall to enable drainage from our yard 5 - crushed gravel fill with cloth on top 6 - soil and sod on top of cloth Quotes for this have ranged between 5 to 8 thousand dollars.

folkvictorian - The companies obviously want to limit their costs. It's possible that there are other locations where they can tap into the line but perhaps you land is the easiest. Or they may have already been turned down by other homeowners and you're next on the contact list. Lizbeth's post reminded me that the Gas company that wanted to run the new line on our property was doing it as part of a project to replace and enlarge the old lines. They wanted our property because it would have been easier and cheaper for them to run a new line and then cap off the old one rather then replace the existing line they already had. She is right when she says they promise everything and downplay any negatives. Four years ago the Susquehanna Power Company wanted to run high power lines on 200' towers through our property. These lines would carry electricity from the nuclear power plant in Berwick, PA to New Jersey and New York. No one in our town even gets electricity from this company. They held a series of public meetings that were well planned out. When we entered the meeting room they had executives placed at tables all around the room to 'answer' our questions. They never spoke to the attendees as a group but kept all discourse to one to two people in a conversational tone. Rather smart on their part. That way no one in the audience could stand up and raise objections and galvanize the group. It took several months and many phone calls to find out that the towers would be 400' from my home and that I would be able to hear the constant 'hum' emitted from the lines. The towers would have run almost through the middle of my 135 acres. And it's not over yet - while the power company and the state PUC have selected an alternative route which uses the existing utility right of way, the National Park Service is objecting - they don't want the power company to cross the Delaware River on park land even though the power lines are already there, they're just on shorter towers. What's ironic is that the park only exists because the Federal government wanted to build the Tocks Island Dam on the Delaware River in the 1950's. After acquiring thousands of acres and eradicating the town of Dingman's Ferry the whole thing was canceled and the Delaware Water Gap National park was created. My examples are probably way more involved than what you're experiencing. I guess I relate them because it might help to know what can happen to the average landowner.

"I have pooling happening as my swale is lower than my neighbour who still has the grass in his swale. 3) I have tried to regrade the low spot beside my shed but the soil there is heavy clay that gets so saturated that the water doesn't want to drain away. 4) I don't want to pile a bunch of soil against my pressure treated shed base" If your yard is supposed to be draining to the neighboring yard to the right (as looking toward the back lot line), then you cannot have your yard be lower than his yard, where they meet. "Cannot" means not now, not ever. You must raise grade in your yard so that water will pass on to his yard. If you don't care about planting in this area, then soil that has a high percentage of clay would be OK to use to raise the grade, especially if you are just covering it with rock. We're primarily concerned with grade and drainage at the surface ... moving water from your yard to his. If you create an area that is lower than the surrounding area, rain runoff will find it because gravity is the only thing that matters. It doesn't matter if you don't want to pile soil against your shed base. You're going to need to do it in order for water not to go there and just sit. As swales go, this one is modest. If you weren't telling us about it, it's doubtful that anyone could perceive it from the pictures alone. Most people with a small back yard don't want it taken up by a swale that is like a roadside ditch. So the grading is mellowed out in order for all the yard to seem more usable ... which it would be, save for the fact that water must pass through a portion of it occasionally. The limits of the swale are a grey area in which, apparently, your shed partially sits, even though it is officially outside of the easement area. I think I would be looking at solving this not by relocating the shed, but by raising it up vertically and raising the surrounding grade back to where it was supposed to be. That way you are not tearing up everything you built and rebuilding it, and destroying your landscape scheme in the process, but building on top of it a little and keeping the same scheme. There is landscape lumber that is treated to withstand contact with moist ground (usually 4" thickness and larger) and lumber that is treated only to withstand occasional wetting (like getting rained on) but not constant contact with ground (usually 2" thickness and smaller.} Hopefully, you have the former. If not, you're going to have problems anyway and need to replace it before you think. If you have the proper lumber, you don't need to worry about soil piled next to it. It will be fine. It's still going to last 20 years(-ish.) So just fix the grade and don't worry about the lumber. Given that there is already a drainage problem here, it would not be a good idea to continue with the plan of creating a base for compost bins within the swale area. Move them to somewhere else farther up grade.

lukkiirish, the source you quoted and your comments missed one important point of Adverse Possession. The possession must be open, hostile, actual, continuous AND EXCLUSIVE. Since the owner is maintaining open, hostile, actual and continuous use of the property, it's NOT exclusive and therefore Adverse Possession fails. Plus it's likely the other person you refer to wouldn't carry all four of the other criteria either so it's not an issue of consequence. And there's a time frame in most places of fifteen years for it to happen anyway. No need for paranoia. I still don't understand how big an area it is to be fenced. Put up some lilacs or other weed-like growth that's fast, bushy and a pest for pedestrians to deal with. Cost is little. It's pretty easy to get some starters and it's just labor of putting it in, possibly watering it a bit and you'll have a blockade up in a short time. As to the initial question, yes it'd bug me. But I imagine you've known about it since you moved in? A fence doesn't have to be a big deal to keep out most people so it doesn't have to be prohibitive in cost.