Basement Flooded
We just had a flash flood in our backyard and the basement (bottom floor of duplex) had some flooding. It sounds like the tenants may have had some minor damage to their belongings but nothing too major. We don’t know if our backyard and back vestibule drains were clogged or if the water came up…
We just had a flash flood in our backyard and the basement (bottom floor of duplex) had some flooding. It sounds like the tenants may have had some minor damage to their belongings but nothing too major.
We don’t know if our backyard and back vestibule drains were clogged or if the water came up from the storm sewers.
In either case what is our liability as landlords? The lease doesn’t really spell it out and we are somewhat new to this.
I’m sure this was a pretty wide-spread problem given all the rain and crazy weather we’ve had!
Dogpatch – Definately what happened to us, I watched it all unfold over the course of the 20 minute deluge.
We had our drain snaked several months ago. It will not stop this process.
Picture a giant tunnel under the street with a smaller drain line running to every house on the block connected not only to their main waste line but also the gutters and leaders from their roof, and the street grates, etc. Now picture the volume of water running through that main line coming from all the water quickly accumulating on roofs, sewers, etc. all the way up every block for who knows what distance. all of that water has to go somewhere and if that main line can only accomidate X amount of water the pressure builds up rapidly and has no where to go but back up those lines leading to each house. After the rain stopped, it took at least 10 minutes for the drain to start flowing agian due to all of the upstream pressure in the system. Once it did get going, the water in the vestibule went down in about 30 seconds…
NSS that’s what we think happened to us. We’re checking the drains today to see if they need to be snaked but we think the water came UP into our back vestibule drain and into our backyard through a drain there.
The problem we have is that even when I cleared the leaves and ice around the drain, water started gurgling up through the drain instead of going down. So no matter how clear the drain was, eventually water flowed out of it and none back in.
Basically a function of the NYC sewer main becoming so overwhelmed the pressure had no where to go but back into the lines feeding it.
UnprotectedWrecks, my husband ran outside into the rain last night after the hail fell to clear leaves from the back patio drywell drain. He said it was good he did because he had to clear a quarter foot pile of leaves that were blocking the drain and the rainwater had pooled up all over the cement in back. Our basement stayed dry. I think the main thing is to do whatever one can to keep water out of the area under the hatch. Back when our basement would flood that’s where the water came in, under the back door because the drain became overwhelmed. I read advice here to put a rubber mat over the deck on top of the hatch which we did and that helped reduce water entering through cracks in the deck planks above which helped a lot. And we replaced the whole hatch and the cement around it so we have the tall lip around the base. Even small rust holes in the hatch’s base will let a lot of water in.
The only solution I know is to push some screen mesh under each downspout and ground grate to keep crap out of the lines in the first place. (You have no idea how much stuff goes down those leaders.)
If it’s not an obstruction, use an upside-down cutlery tray or even milk crate with mesh on it, over the ground drain, to create something that the water can still get into as leaves pile up and water rises.
When it really pours buckets like last night, I go out in the rain and clear away the leaves and hail from the mesh during the middle of the storm – it’s the only way to keep water moving at max.
Fall storms are the worst because of the leaves, but nothing to be done…
Could this have happened?
1. Drain in backyard/patio gets blocked with hail
2. Water begins to pool in backyard/patio
3. When water level reaches the level of some opening into the house (i.e. an opening in a hatch, a vent) it pours into house.
We had this happen. Water poured in through a vent opening in a ground level window well, which was covered with a solid metal hatch but had a 1″ cut out for external wiring risers. Ended up with 3′ of hail in the well and a basement full of water. Took me a bit of time to figure this out; was really freaky to see 3 feet of hail in a covered window well.
Solution is to build a 4″ lip around the hatch and have the hatch sit on that. Would take another inch of rain beyond what we had last nite to rise above that and flood.
We also flooded. We literally JUST had the rear drainage redone. The culprit in our case may have been leaves clogging up the grate. Does anyone know of a way to keep that from happening, short of standing out there while it rains?
The storm sewers were overwhelmed and did back up into basements in Brooklyn Heights. I also noticed that the hail clogged the street drains and created mini-lakes. The hail could have clogged your yard drain as well. My super, bless him, was on the roof clearing the drains of hail so our roof would not turn into a swimming pool.