water water everywhere - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

**genecarp** · 09-06-2008, 05:33 PM

Sitting home enjoying the HEAVY rain, two calls in, SO FAR, flooded basements, houses around here are not really designed to deal with this amount of water. the main issues are, GUTTER SIZE- GUTTER MAINTENANCE- AND GRADING. how about other parts of the country?

PS, many older homes did not have the foundation water proofing that new homes now have.

wellbuilthome · 09-06-2008, 05:38 PM

No leaks but it just stsrted raining heavy here . Im sitting by the phone.

neolitic · 09-06-2008, 05:46 PM

We had ours early in the summer.
"50 year" rain, "100 year" rain, and
all time record for 8 hour rain.
All within 10 days.

**Cole** · 09-06-2008, 05:59 PM

Rain? What is that?

ChainsawCharlie · 09-07-2008, 02:45 AM

nor any drop to drink

over here...rain? I average 160 inches a year at my house. Sometimes we'll get it coming down in INCHES per hour. It's not considered heavy till it hits 10-12 inches over an 8 hour span.

And microclimates....boy have got'em. On so many occasions, it's been dry at my house, but raining just 4/10ths of a mile up the road from me.

We usually get 10 minutes or so of rain almost every day.

Bob Kovacs · 09-07-2008, 06:40 AM

As you said, they're definitely not designed to take heavy rains. Our house in NJ had a 12" overhang on the front and zero on the back, so the water didn't get very far from the foundation. Add a bunch of large trees that would fill the gutters, and you end up with a wall of water hitting the ground very close to the house. When we'd get heavy rain like that, the cinder block walls would be damp up to about 3' off the floor, and the 1/2" gap at the french drain would be flowing like mad to the sump pump. If you lost power (and obviously the sump pump) for more than a few hours, you had a mess on your hands. Luckily we never did, but plenty of others I knew did.

chris klee · 09-07-2008, 07:43 PM

thant why i have a back up pump and a battery backup. plus yard drains that flow to the street. everything is graded properly. add to that i am about 6' above the street level and i dont think i am going to have any problem.

when i do the roof (next summer) i am adding overhangs all the way around.

Roundtable · 09-07-2008, 07:54 PM

Had a basement flood from Fay, turns out after we were done and gone the h.o had a light put in the driveway, hack light guy burried his wire, and crushed/cut our 8" drain for the gutters, the drain box overflowed, filled the swail with water and the water flowed over the fondation.

Got it fixed up now!!!