r/HomeImprovement • u/CutMyLifeIn2Pizzaz • 1d ago
First time homeowners and flooded walkout basement and garage from heavy rain...suggestions?
We bought this house a few months back and had 5 inches of rain this week flooding our walk out basement and garage. We're on a sloped hill and this concrete / brick / whateverthefuckheused pad was certainly a DIY job by the previous homeowner, or neglected for 20+ years. Anyway, the water pools and seeps into the cracks causing it to go through my foundation along the backside of the house...literally a stream of water draining in.
Figured on the concrete portion we'd need to pour a new pad with some sort of trench drain in the concrete, then dig down to the footings around the rest of the house to connect a sloped french drain and waterproof the exterior foundation. Curious if anyone has been in a similar situation and how you dealt with it? Pretty handy but this seems like a bigger DIY job than I want to tackle.
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u/Quincy_Wagstaff 1d ago
Looks like the yard slopes toward the house. Will be a never ending battle to keep water away. Your basement is a hole in the ground and you have a funnel adding water to it.
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u/AbsolutelyPink 14h ago
You are correct in the modifications that need to be made. I'd add another french drain away from the house to help steer some of the slope water away and the exterior french drain, exterior and interior repair to cracks and exterior waterproofing to handle the rest.
Make sure you add gutters and divert your downspouts away from the house. If they're draining in back, perhaps resloping the gutters so they can dump and be carried towards the front and away from the house.
I don't know if you'll need a new pad, but perhaps a channel drain in front of the garage too.
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u/PBRForty 1d ago
It’s a simple answer, but hard in execution - you gotta keep the water away from your house. We’ve had 2 walk out basements and once you get the water sloping the correct way, they’ll be bone dry.
I can’t tell much about the source from the pictures, but gutters are the first line of defense. After that make sure the grade is sloping away from the house on all sides for at least 10 feet. One photo shows a pretty significant slope into the house. Anywhere you have a deck could possibly have under deck roofing installed.