It’s flooding…again?
We are lucky that we have a basement, and feel spoiled by having an adult haven, replete with gaming consoles, a mini-fridge, and a microwave. When we moved in and had our first heavy rain, our basement walls leaked a little, but it wasn’t bad so we didn’t think much of it. But that is where the luck stopped.
After that, every time we got a heavy rain we’d be running downstairs to check the basement walls. And sure enough, water would be pouring in from 20 different spots making it impossible to manage with towels. We started keeping Quick Dams on hand (which worked great at corralling the water), and bought a 5-gallon wet/dry shop vac from Home Depot. But when the 5-gallon bucket would fill up in under 20-seconds, there was only so much it and we could do to keep up with the volume of water pouring through the walls. We started tracking the weather more closely and if heavy rain was forecasted, we had a whole system in place. We’d unplug everything, move anything on the floor to higher ground, and take all of the art off the walls. Honestly, it was exhausting.
Nothing seemed to keep the water out. Not the Flex Tape and Gorilla tape that are heavily advertised. Not the 3-layers of waterproof paint that my husband repainted our walls with (will post which brand in a later post). And getting a sump pump installed was out for us — there was nowhere for the water to go without a major plumbing overhaul. We knew we had to find a different solution.
After consulting with friends and family, we finally hired a company to put gutters on that side of the house. We had kicked around the idea of putting in a french drain to help move the water away from that wall, but given how much more expensive that was versus the gutters, we opted for gutters.
The day after they were installed, we had a fairly decent rain and the gutters worked great! No water in the basement. It was too early to celebrate, but I can confirm after multiple heavy rains, we still have no water in the basement. So truly it wasn’t about keeping the water out so much as it was for moving the water away from the house. The things you get to learn as a homeowner, right?
