Most of us remember times when our basements were flooded and damaged, causing us to lose furniture, family heirlooms, keepsakes, and all our previous hard work. Unexpected water levels and basement flooding have been a concern for homeowners around the world, especially those who live in areas prone to heavy rainfall.
However, it is not natural for your basement to flood or leak when it rains. In fact, this piece of property can boost your real estate significantly. If you face this problem occasionally, here are a few things you must try. Even though Mother Nature cannot be stopped, taking good precautions can help you save effort and money in the future.
Grade Your Lawn
To ensure that your basement does not flood, the yard around your house should not slope towards it. Instead, it should grade away from your house.
Think about it this way. When rainfall occurs, the water must go somewhere. If your yard is sloped away from your home, the rainwater will find its way away from the building’s walls and into the streets and gutters.
If your lawn slopes towards the walls outside your home, you need to look into some landscaping options. The good news is that there are a number of versatile designs you can adopt while landscaping depending on your design style and current architecture.
Here are some landscaping options to look into:
- Divert rain spouts
- Invest in a rain garden
- Get a green roof
- Dig an indentation in your lawn through which rainwater can travel
- Make use of a heavy mulch
Downspouts
Most people connect downspouts to the footer drain or keep them exactly above the ground. This mistake leads to basement flooding. Instead, take some more material and add it in, so that water collected in the spout flows down further from the outside perimeter of your house.
When doing this, ensure that the spouts are directed towards other yards and lawns so that the water does not find its way back into your yard or around your house. If it does, it will soak through the ground when it rains, causing intense basement flooding.
Keep Your Gutters Clean
Believe it or not, leaves, sticks, and trash accumulate in gutters. Hence, it is vital to regularly clean them so that your house does not flood during heavy rain.
When it rains, cluttered gutters cannot drain the rainwater, which is why the water ends up accumulating around your home or through the foundation.
The clogged gutter starts to sprout water during heavy rains because it is too full, and the rainwater has nowhere else to go. This means that the foundation of your home receives heavy precipitation, flooding different areas and wrecking furniture.
Get a Sump Pump
The best way to deal with a calamity is to make preparations to prevent it from happening in the first place.
To ensure that you never have to witness basement flooding, invest in an automatic sump pump. This helps check water buildup from regular rainfall so that there is no chance of flooding.
Sump pumps act like drains- they suck water out of the house, including the basement, and redirect it to another place.
Do you need to renovate your basement after it got flooded last spring? Don’t worry; give us a call so that we can transform this underrated piece of real estate into something magical.
