We finally got some rain today. Quite a lot of it, in fact. The forecast said scattered thunderstorms, and usually it's hit or miss around here, so I went ahead and watered some of my garden last night. That turned out to be very unnecessary.
The sound of the rain pounding the roof in waves and the frequency of the lightening had me wondering if maybe we weren't in line for a tornado. I can't remember the last time I saw it rain so hard.
Paranoid or not, it was a good thing I went down to the basement. At least I was there to mitigate the flooding!
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| Rain water coming in like a river! |
We've had trouble with drainage at the back of our house before, but it has never come in like this. I pulled off the cap on the drain outside the back door. Usually that is enough to keep it out of the basement. It gets plugged with debris sometimes.
But it didn't help much with the way the rain was coming down today. I think the gutter must be plugged again. My husband already cleaned them out once this spring. We don't even have any trees near the house. Oh the joys of homeownership!
The rain was also coming in around the ventilation pipe for the furnace and also through the PVC conduit that runs the electric lines into the breaker box. I've not seen it do that before!
The basement is actually very well built and was one of the things that sold us on this house. My neighbor who used to own this old farmhouse jacked the whole house up on I-beams and built it himself. The concrete is carefully sloped to direct all water to this center drain.
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| Drain hole in center of basement. |
It wasn't going down fast enough, so I had to pull the cap from this one as well.
I think what we'll have to do is rent a ditch-witch and put in some french drains to run the water down and over the hill. We are on top of a hill, but the backyard where they dug out the basement has just a tiny slope back toward the house. The installed drains aren't working well enough. We could also use some new gutters, but we've been trying to get by with the current ones until we're ready to put on a new metal roof.
Add it to the list! It's a long list...
Linking up with "F is for Friday" over at I am woman, hear me nurture.
Oh so cr#ppy! I hate water in the basement. We had carpet in part of the basement and I used a wet/dry vac to try to keep ahead of the water BUT where do you dump it when its full? What a mess! Hope your idea works and you don't have to do that again.
ReplyDeleteWow I'm really sorry to hear you've got that kind of mess.
ReplyDeleteHow often do you have this problem? French drains might have to be a priority project. At least your not digging a trench with a post hole digger. Been there, done that, don't recommend it.
Oh my goodness! You are scaring me! We plan on buying our first house next summer. I will have to remember to consider extra drainage just in care. Wow!
ReplyDeleteOh dear! We've had way too much water, too, but thus far it's stayed outside and only swamped my garden. What a year!
ReplyDelete