Commiseration: How many folks here have basements that occasionally flood?

[Umbran]

The title says it all.

My basement is usually bone dry. Maybe once or twice a year, when the ground is still frozen and we get really heavy rain, I get water in the basement.
It is still February, and raining like gangbusters in Boston...

I caught it early, and started in with the shop-vac. A full shop vac of water weighs over 100 lbs. I'm a strong guy, lifting that repeatedly is a risk to the lower back. I'm thankful it got deep enough for me to use my submersible pump...

 

[Pbartender]

It doesn't flood, per se, but we will get a small stream going from one spot beneath the stairs to the floor drain if there's a heavy rain or a lot of snow melt.

 

[megamania]

Living in Vermont where two rivers connect there is a lot of flooded basements.

Sunp Pumps are the way of life here.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Janx]

what good is a basement if it floods?

I lived in 1 house with a basement that leaked. If it rained a lot, puddles would form. Slightly more manageable, than having the entire floor get wet, or worse, get deep.

I can't imagine having a basement that actually filled with water deep enough to not keep anything down there, as that would defeat the purpose of having a place to keep stuff...

 

[Umbran]

I live in Florida where it's so wet, nobody even attempts basements.

Much of developed Florida is built on drained swamps. I am continually surprised that more homes down there don't burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp

what good is a basement if it floods?

That depends on how badly it floods. For me, the place is still useful. It only floods once or twice a year, and then only a couple inches of water on the floor. Anything stored in sealed plastic bins, or on pallets/shelves stays dry. And the ceiling down there is to low to finish the space properly, so it isn't "living space", but it serves well for some storage, laundry, and workspace.

We lost a bunch of stuff down there the first year we moved in, as we didn't know about the tendency to flood. Since then, though, it is just an inconvenience. I've already got most of the water out - there's what looks to be a small bit of seepage that might continue for the next day or so. But then, it'll be back to being clean and dry.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

After two years of having this happen, and spending 48+ hours with shop vacs continuously running to keep up with the water, we finally had an interior drain system installed in our basemet (most of the basement is finished -- not something we wanted to get moldy and go bad).

The crew busted through the slab along two walls, dug an 18" drain, installed two battery-backed-up sump pumps (replacing the one useless one in the old french drain), and then re-concreted the slab with some wall protection that drained into the new drainage system. They finished in one day, and we've been dry and snug ever since.

Well worth it.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I live in a ground floor apartment in Arlington. Fortunately, we're rather far up above the river, and flooding has never been a problem, even after a hurricane or massive snowmelts.

I grew up in Western Kentucky, on what used to be a flood plain for the Ohio, and we didn't have a basement. This is because of things like it being more or less reclaimed swampland. In 3rd grade, it was so wet that spring that we had water standing in our back yard. My grandmother's house (about a 1/2 mile away) did have a basement that seemed to occasionally leak, but that seems to have been due to poor placement of the septic tank. (Yes, it stank.) It was on a hill, though, so they could have a basement.

My parents (relatively recently) built a cabin nearby my grandmother's old place, and have a nice finished basement. Apparently, during construction, tiles and piping were laid down under the grass to drain water away from the house to avoid flooding.

Brad