• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Another entry from Carroll Gardens… When we bought our two-family home in Carroll Gardens in 2005, we had so much work to do inside that the garden felt like an afterthought. For over a year, we were so excited to have a place to grill that we didn’t really care about the appearance of the backyard. The original backyard was terraced allowing the lower level (next to the house) to flood. Inevitably, what we now refer to as the Great Flood of July 5th hit, and our basement flooded due to heavy rains and poor drainage in the backyard. After this happened a few times we realized we needed to address the core problem or it would continue to haunt us. Although we wanted a comfortable and beautiful space, we needed a design that forced all water to the storm drain as opposed to letting it saturate the backyard and foundation through old brick.

We fortunately had the help of Luis Delgado at LMD Design to GC and coordinate the overall project. After removing countless truck loads of brick and dirt as well as oyster shells and old newspapers, we quickly realized that both neighbors were unknowingly draining their water into the middle of our backyard through old clay pipes that were never connected to their storm sewers. The old clay pipes originally looked unused. We plugged them in the afternoon and fortunately it rained that evening. The neighbors backyard flooded heavily that night, and we realized we had yet another problem; if it had not rained that night we probably wouldn’t have caught this.

After getting that problem addressed with the neighbors, we went to work on forming additional concrete to help keep water away from the foundation. We pitched the backyard away from the house so that we could utilize a 20 ft trough to capture any runoff. The trough delivers the runoff back towards the house and into the storm sewer. After the plumbing was set, we poured 6 inches of concrete. I think we ended up using close to 300 bags of concrete in a 20 x 22 backyard. We may have gone a little overboard but it got the job done. It ended up coming out better than we ever imagined.

Cosmetically, we chose Saltillo tile and painted the back wall a deep red to warm things up. Plenty of perennials keep it green, and we make a point of planting annuals once a year to give it color. All in all, we love it and can think of few better places in all of Brooklyn to be!