When It Rains…… It Pours!

Well by now everyone has seen those YouTube vids of Brooklyn under water from the last few days of rain…. I’ve lived here my whole life and never seen anything like this.

One doc I read said the drain system is only designed to take 1.75” of rain an hour, and in Bay Ridge we saw over 4” per hour yesterday. To make it worse, here in Bay Ridge there are NO storm drains… what a mess.

So, I was lucky to have previously solved my basement water issue, where every time we got over .25 inch hour in a five minute period, my main drain backed up and over flowed into the stair well at the door of my backyard basement…and over the stoop into my basement….

After MUCH discovery we ended up realigning the main pipe at the p-trap which had become slightly off line (after some construction near the front basement door) causing the roof runoff to swirl BEFORE entering the whole house p-trap and eventually the sewer.

It looks like this minor “bad alignment” between two 4” pipes caused a years worth of headaches…. As we received Zero water in the basement yesterday— a day which previ ously would have dropped 12 inches of roof runoff into the garden level floor.

So the bottom line is:

Use trades people that know what they are doing… as even a minor item which goes un noticed can cause hundreds of dollars worth of damage down the line.

Hire guys with experience!

jrs84o

in General Discussion 1 year and 7 months ago

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Guest User | 1 year and 7 months ago

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I have had many basement water backup issues in recent years after no problems for first few years in the house. This week we were 100% dry after I recently cleared a blockage from my vent stack via the roof.
I second the comment to utilize specialized trades for their expertise instead of merely relying on a run of the mill licensed vendor or well meaning handyman

jrs84o | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Oui! Oui! Oui!… Yes! Yes! Yes!… It helps to be located “upstream” on the peak of the “Ridge.”….. Now, to deal with my leaking roof, is the next problem. It never ends, does it?

colonialrevival | 1 year and 7 months ago

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Glad to hear you were dry. I was too. For many folks like us, it’s a matter of proper mechanics, yes, but also a healthy dose of fortuitous conditions. Example — the people living on Prospect Park West probably fared much better than those further “down” the slope, like on 4th Ave and Carroll. I’m not sure there is anything those people can do to ever have a dry basement. They live at the bottom of a hill, with hundreds of households further upstream draining into the sewer. We can fix our systems, waterproof until the cows come home, and have so many french drains that we greet eachother with “bonjour”, and still some people will flood — until the city embarks on more sewer upgrades like the ones happening on Park Place right now.

jrs84o | 1 year and 7 months ago

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The Brooklyn plumber who INSTANTLY diagnosed my basement flooding problem and recommended a solution about ten weeks ago after a year of grief was Robert Sessa:

https://www.facebook.com/bobthebrooklynplumber/

Highly recommended from my end.