This client was experiencing awful basement and garage flooding during torrential thunderstorms and because of two broken waterlines on the street above their house. They reached out to Isbir Construction & Landscape Corp. for help to remedy the situation. They also had interior French drains that were pumping water out into two spots in their yard making those lawn areas perpetually swampy and completely unusable. The problem was that the driveway was sloped back towards the garage with a very small and inefficient drain just in front of the garage door. With any significant amount of rain, the drain would clog with leaves, mulch, or debris. The other issue was that the 4” diameter outlet pipe connected to the drain in front of the garage door would be overwhelmed and the driveway area in front of the garage area door would flood. Once the flooding occurred in the driveway area in front of the garage, the water would work its way underneath the garage door and into the garage and then into the basement and flood it out.
The solution was a complete change in the way the driveway was sloped. The fix was to slope the entire driveway away from the garage (instead of towards it) and install a new drain halfway in between the garage and the street to collect the water much further away from the garage with a much larger drain. An 8” diameter outlet pipe was used in the new drain as opposed to the deteriorated 4” pipe that was originally used. To accomplish this, approximately 2’ of soil had to be removed from the driveway to re-grade the driveway to slope efficiently away from the house. Then a 24”x24” concrete catch basin with a steel grate was installed at the low point in the driveway. The drain was then connected to the public storm sewer underground near the street, with permission from the Municipality. The concrete driveway was then re-poured with a 5” gravel base and 5” thickness of concrete; all sloping towards the newly installed 24”x24” catch basin.
Also rectified during the project were the two swampy areas on the left and right sides of the house where the sump pumps continually drained water to. New solid pipes were connected to the end of those pipes and buried underground and underneath of the driveway to connect to the new catch basin. This eliminated the swampy areas in the yard and eliminated ice forming in the yard during the winter months. The holes and slots in the catch basin grate allow for easy inspection of the two sump pump pipes where they connect into the catch basin.
The grate also allows the system to be maintained and cleaned out regularly.
After the drainage and concrete work was completed, the soil around the driveway was then re-graded to a manageable slope and seeded and/or mulched to restore the area. While the job was a relatively large project for a residential driveway, this was the most effective solution to prevent the basement and the garage from being flooded in the future.
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