Money I’m Thankful We Spent
We bought our house in February 2005. The basement has flooded at least once every winter, and sometimes more often. The first couple of floods weren’t going to be helped. We have a heat pump, which serves as a dehumidifier and pulls water out of the air. The first time our basement flooded it was because the pump hooked up to the heat pump failed, so instead of pumping water out of the house, it just began pooling in that back part of our basement. We rigged it with a piece of Styrofoam, and it worked for a bout a year. Before we had another minor flood from it and had to replace the pump.
The second time our basement flooded it was because the hot water heater broke.
Neither of those times prepared us for the real flooding problem we would end up facing. The drainage in our neighborhood is bad, and ground water started forcing it’s way up through the concrete into our floor.
The Geyser One time when it flooded like that, we thought a sewer pipe or something had broken, as water was literally geysering up around one of the sewer pipes in our basement. We even called out a plumber. But no, it was just ground water finding the path of least resistance.
We bought pumps. We learned what level of outside rain equaled water in the basement. It was a pain, but the flooding generally confined itself to the unfinished part of our basement. It ruined a bag of dog food. There was an old trunk that had some of my baby clothes in it that was water damaged, but for the most part, it was an hour or so of work (spread out over the day) once or twice a year. It was a nuisance, but survivable.
We took out the lower portion of the drywall that separated the pantry from the hallway leading to the finished room in order to prevent mold.
Options We considered building a French drain. We even had the power and cable companies come out and mark where the lines were so we wouldn’t hit them. But the amount of work in digging our own French drain was beyond daunting (our yard is not small) and we couldn’t really afford to pay someone to do it or rent machinery.
And then the city announced that drainage in our neighborhood was really bad and that they’d be doing some work to fix that. We foolishly thought that would help us.
I say foolishly because what they did to prevent severe flooding for the houses across the street (and down a steep slope- I live on the side of a hill) made the flooding worse on our level. That’s right, the city’s flood remediation work made our flooding worse.
June & Larry curled up on the foam footstool- where they felt the jackhammering in the basement the least
Over It Winter 2010/2011 I finally had a mini breakdown. The water was now starting to come up under the carpet in the finished room, too. I was sick the day we were down in the basement dealing with water. The pumps worked in the unfinished area where there are low section that water pools in early, but for the finished room, I had to be down there with the wet/dry vac every hour or so.
I was done, done with a flooding basement. Spring 2011, we had a couple of different flood remediation companies out to talk about what they could do for us. We settled on one and authorized the work. (For the record- dogs aren’t really a fan of people jackhammering in your basement.)
We had the money to pay for it up front, but took the one year same as cash financing option.
Truth be told, we should have done it years earlier- whether we had the money or not.
We are now in our second winter of having pipes running under our basement floor to give the water a nice easy path back out to the street, instead of coming up into our basement. We have had record rains this week, and instead of a flooded basement, I have one damp section of concrete (right in the crook of the pipes), and that’s it.
Happy After six years of the basement flooding at least once per year, I am now on my second winter of no flooding. It is worth every penny we spent and more.
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