Rain Intensity, Water in Basement

I can’t take it anymore.

Over the last 3 years or so, every time we get a flash flood warning here in Brooklyn, my basement gets 10-20 gallons of water.

The main sewer pipe, which accepts the roof runoff, basically can not handle the water volume if we get an intense .5” over a 10 minute period… and the pipe fills up causing the drain at the foot of my exterior steps in the backyard to overflow into the basement.

The pipe has been cleaned, and there is no obstruction at the p-trap.

This has ONLY HAPPENED in the last few years, never during the 20+ years I’ve lived here.

I’ve even built a dry well which works well taking the garden runoff.. it’s simply the roof water causing a problem.

QUESTION

Are the rainstorms getting more intense?

Comments?

I’d like to avoid pumps or interior drain solutions.

If I put another 4” pipe in, essentially doubling the size of the path to the sewer, or replace with a 5” pipe… would this help?

jrs84o

in General Discussion 1 year and 10 months ago

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Guest User | 1 year and 9 months ago

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We’ve had water in out basement so many ways I’ve lost count. I flush a dose of Roebic bacterial based drain maintenance product once a month. And I snake the main trap with a toilet auger 2 to 4 times a year (basically when we travel or when I start noticing telltale signs of impending doom).
The idea to divert a portion of the roof runoff to the rear is interesting, especially because I have an elevated garden bed at a higher level because lots at rear side of the block are about 4 feet higher. Maybe I could stall overflows by filtering through garden into trench drain and back toward house storm drain. This could allow for a nice built in garden watering system as well

colonialrevival | 1 year and 9 months ago

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We’ve had our own journey with sewers, drainage, etc. We’ve been dry since getting our previously back-pitched line replaced.

A few things:
When’s the last time you’ve cleaned out your main trap? You may spend all your time looking further down the line for an obstruction, only to be missing the culprit 2 inches away. Especially knowing you were draining from the roof previously, all it would take is a small twig wedged the right way, mixed with some roofing granules, to greatly reduce your capacity. I open up our trap and vacuum it out at least once a year.

When you do, note how high the water sits in the trap. Ours sat very high for a long time. I later learned that means our line does not have proper pitch. This led to our drain getting clogged much more frequently, as detritus would just sit if it couldn’t make it up the incline. Now that our line has been replaced, the water level in our trap sits much lower now.

Good luck.

hannibalking4424 | 1 year and 9 months ago

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I have similar new and now frequent problem dealing with lack of sewer capacity and storm water not being able to get into sewer line. After diverting roof water, we are still getting water backing up from street in cellar and at the same time hydrostatic pressure forcing water in through floor or walls, even after pointing and parging. We’ve also inspected line to street and drains with cameras and they’re clear. City checked sewer on our street last summer and said it was clear. Any advice for plumber or contractor to problem solve this further? It was recommended to put in check valve and internal French drains, but I have no where to pump water to if it can’t get to the sewer.. Any recommendations are welcome.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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Well.. Just to wrap this experience for anyone who is interested…

Looking at the 5-minute rainfall averages for my area today, there was a 20 minute period between 10:36am-10:56am when the Percip Rate averaged about .65-.7 inches/hr…. this is where the main pipe backed up to the lowest open-air drain at the foot of my basement steps.

Fortunately the water build-up in the pipes is not high enough to pop out the basement toilet, sink, etc.

Its been raining steady all afternoon, 2+ hours, with a much more “NORMAL” Percip rate .12-.45 inches/hr… And the drains have no problem purging the runoff.

THANKS.. to all those who chimed in.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 9 months ago

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This is good. It just sounds like your floor drain cannot drain it fast enough but i would continue to look at what jeremy says and i would consider a pump. I see a lot of pumps in basements and have two family members who rely on them.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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As Bay Ridge goes we are on the “hump” which runs parallel to the Aves (highest point E to W)…. Its high ground here, but over 110 years the grading of each house’s backyard DOES slope towards the building…. We re-graded the whole backyard last summer.. so the Yard runoff is not a problem.

As I look into the clean-out past the p-trap at the front of the house, I see water dumping into the sewer from the main pipe during the highest point of the rainstorm… so it does not seem to be a blockage at the city sewer hand-off… ALTHOUGH the front street is a full-on river down the whole block.

After talking to several neighbors, it seems only those who completely disconnect the roof run-off from the main system are spared any water in their basements–

One person has installing a linear channel-drain (vs 4″ circular pipe drain) across the back of his property– That set-up forces100% of the roof run-off to make its way past 30-40 feet of backyard BEFORE hitting a drain at the top of the cellar steps.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 9 months ago

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op, are you down a hill from others in your area? we are on a bit of a hill here and never have an issue. to the west of us, the hill rises a little further and to our east it drops and about 5 blocks from here, it bottoms (maybe 30′ lower than where we are). during a major rainstorm a couple of years ago, every basement in the area at the bottom of the hill flooded (dozens of houses). the sewers could not handle all of the water coming into them from the houses and catch basins up the hill and it ended up coming out the toilets and floor drains of the houses at the bottom of the hill. this has happened several times in several neighborhoods in the city in the past decade and you will know it has happen as you pass through and see house after house putting items that were stored in the basement out for trash collection.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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THNX for advice on EcoClean. Will try anything now.

It’s no consolation.. but half my block in front of house now looks like the Amazon, and everyone’s in their backyard cursing.

I DID manage to watch exactly what happened in real time with my backyard drain.. so I see exactly what’s what. The pipes were handling the rainfall nicely until the ..5-.7 inch time period.. which occurred twice.

Ugh.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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REAL TIME UPDATE AFTER STORM WARNING RAINFALL THIS AFTERNOON

EVERYONE on my block is walking around STUNNED.

[IMG_0009](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:kMAt:img_0009.jpeg.jpg) [IMG_0013](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:kour:img_0013.png.jpg)

One five minute period saw a max rainfall amount of .7 inches… that’s in a 5 minute period.

Basement still flooded, even with the downspout diversion.

next I’ll try to divert 60% of the runoff from the main sewer to the backyard (vs 60% to the main pipe) by simply turning around the “y” connector.

Guest User | 1 year and 9 months ago

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Unless you are somehow working with PVC, your 4 inch main is most certainly no longer working with a 4 inch capacity flow rate. The plumbers on here can probably give you some rule of thumb measurements for revising your calculations. The below reference says maybe 25% reduction due to scale. Some other factors to consider: Is your household or are nearby neighbors using “flushable” or non flushable wipes or hygiene products? Did a sinkhole recently develop on your block like it did in front of me after road construction? Broken pipe? Etc.
Maybe climate change was not causing your problem up to 4 years ago and then it started causing your problem 3 years ago. Maybe it is a contributing factor among other contributing factors. Technologies are cheaper and cheaper and more and more accessible for putting a camera in your pipes for helping to identify more and guess less.
Some people snake or water jet regularly to maintain old problematic mains for preventing basement backups.
I prefer to use non corrosive Roebic brand drain cleaners regularly to prevent water in my baseme nt. I also do this for several of my clients who prefer the cheaper and less intrusive kick the can down the road approach.
https://ecoclean1.com/what-causes-scale-in-sewer-pipes/

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 9 months ago

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When i lived in the carolinas in the 80’s, we had weather patterns that i feel we are now seeing here. I have suspected this for a long time, including these hazy or cloudy weeks in august which i do not recall as a child on long island. Prompted by your comments, last night i looked up historic rainfall for the carolinas and nyc and guess what, nyc’s current annual rainfall is 5″ closer to and almost on target with coastal north carolina’s. Your 20% guess is a little high but not out of line. This shift occured (i think from what i read) over the past two decades. For me, it feels like the line beteeen the warmer, moister south has simply moved 600 miles north.

My uncle worked as an editor for mother earth news. When one of the big national papers broke the story about climate change in 1992, he told several of us in the family that most of these publications knew this going back to the 1970’s but nobody wanted to be the first to publish what many then and still debunk as an unscientific opinion. They felt the opinion of the mainstream media and public opinion could hurt their magazine and make it out to be some wacko fringe publication.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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I want to contribute that “extra” 20% of RECENT runoff to climate change.

Comments?

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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So my original observation in the main post is just about correct….

If we get .5 inch or more rainfall (300 gallons) in a short period of time, say 1-2 minutes, the main sewer connect can only handle about 80% the runoff (240 gallons) during that period… so the extra runoff ends up in my basement.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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Oops.. a 4” pipe will potentially dump 240 gallons a minute into city sewer.
-or-
Dump 100% of the 4” main sewer pipe into the sewer 8x a minute.

My bad.

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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Yes, I have seen “them” doing sewer and drain work around Bay Ridge. But this is no different than the last 20 years.. our street always fills up with water at the curbs. There simply are not enough sewer intakes.

So the rain was not sufficient last night to worry about flooding. I took the time to do a little googling.

In ROUND numbers:

A 1000 sq/ft roof will capture approx 600 gallons of water each hour, at 1”/hr rate.
A 20 linear foot, 5” gutter will max out at approx 25 gallons of water.
A 50 linear foot 4” main sewer pipe will contain approx 30 gallons of water..
A main sewer connect on a 4” pipe will dump approx 120 gallons of water a minute assuming “standard” installation (water pressure along the 4” pipe)

Considering I have rarely seen the gutter flow over the rims, the overflow problem needs to be with the main sewer pipe, which connects to city sewer.

The main sewer pipe will unload 100% of itself into the sewer at a flow rate of aprox 4x a minute BEFORE the runoff emptying into the city sewer (beyond the p-trap) would become a problem… backup the full p ipe…. And come up through drain at the foot of the back door and flow into the basement.

I need to ponder on this a few hours for a bit more analysis.

Guest User | 1 year and 9 months ago

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Have the drain pipes been inspected with a camera? I make some good guesses about the insides of pipes that I can’t see, and obviously I make some wrong guesses when doing so blind.
Using general climate change as an answer to an acute change occurring 3 years ago seems like it may be a lazy assumption instead of a practical assessment of change beginning to affect this one house 3 years ago but not affecting it 4 to 20 years ago.
NYC started installing a significant number of components in specific locations at the sidewalks a few years ago. Could this have something to do with backups occurring more frequently in the last few years? What devices are installed at these recent install sites along the curbs? Cleanouts? I’m not the only person on here who has noticed these seemingly one-off sewer construction sites that don’t involve street long re-piping, correct?

BSDOD | 1 year and 9 months ago

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I think this is something more of us will have to deal with. The weather patterns that are happening now were not part of the planning when these homes were built 130+ years ago.. I watch the volume of water that comes off the roof and wonder when the backyard will become overwhelmed. My down spout exits to the yard. Wondering how to increase the capacity of the soil…

jrs84o | 1 year and 9 months ago

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OK… branched the downspout 20 feet into the backyard via a subtle pvc “y” and corrugated black garden pipe.

In theory, branch should take about 1/2 of the runoff.. but, hey, I’m no engineer..!..!!.

Lots of rain, perhaps over an inch, predicted for this eve/morn… so we’ll see what happens.

justinromeu26 | 1 year and 10 months ago

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here where i live, our roofs drain to the alley behind the houses, not the city sewer. if you can get away with something like that and your neighbors won’t mind, why not? but if it floods the neighbor’s yards there will be a problem. if it were me, i would put a pump in and put a line to the front of the house or a hose (some of these automatic pumps have hose fittings on them) and when rain is expected, i would unfurl the hose and leave it toward the road.

if you are in a district where the houses drain their roofs to the sewer, i doubt it would be legit.