Prepare your home for heavy rainfall and prevent flooding in your basement. Protecting your home from flooding is an investment that will pay off when extreme weather hits your hometown. Major weather events that cause flooding are becoming more common across North America. Basement flooding can cost anywhere from $500 due to light flooding to upwards of $10,000 or more in extreme cases and when raw sewage comes into play. Flooding can pose immediate health hazards and make your home unlivable, but there are ways to be prepared.
Increased flooding in cities all across North America has resulted in terrifying stories like these, where two men were trapped in a flooding elevator with only two inches left of air before they were rescued. What’s most concerning is that while increased hurricane intensity has caused devastation along the U.S. Atlantic coastline, incidences like the above in Toronto are happening because of increased rainfall and infrastructure that can’t keep up.
As a homeowner, there may be little you can do when a hurricane strikes, but you can prepare your home to handle increased rainfall. If you want to know when to call a professional plumber do it to flood proof your home. Once your home is flooded, it’s the cleanup crew you’re going to be calling. A professional plumber will help you install equipment you need to reduce your risk of basement flooding. Read on to find out some of the ways you can protect your home from flooding when the rain starts to fall.
The best place to start is modifying your water valves and installing interior and exterior backflow valves. These backflow valves kick in when the municipal sewage system backs up. In many municipal water systems, heavy rain can overwhelm the sewage pipes.
With nowhere for the water to go, it starts flowing backwards, meaning a mixture of greywater and raw sewage flows into your basement or even out of your toilet. Backflow valves can prevent water from flowing in the wrong direction, so when it rains, your home isn’t jeopardized. A sewage flood is a major health concern.
Next you should determine how water flows around your home. Smart landscape design and home construction will direct water to flow away from your home and onto the street. Houses with declining driveways that lead into lower garages are going to be highly susceptible to extreme rainfall.
It’s an expensive fix but regrading your driveway may be necessary. If you live in an older neighborhood and your front yard has been replaced with a parking pad, consider turning it back into grass and soil that will soak up the water and rely on street parking instead. You could save yourself tens of thousands of dollars in water damage in the coming years.
Another renovation you can undertake to mitigate flood damage is to raise electrical and climate systems. If you can’t prevent flood damage to your home, you can mitigate it by raising circuit breakers, sockets, switches, and wiring to a foot above expected flood levels, as well as your furnace and water heater.
Flooding is a major concern for homeowners. Invest in flood preparations and spare yourself the headache of a flooded home.
It certainly seems like we’ve been hearing about a lot of floods lately. Great post about preparing your home! I recently came across another article about what to do after a flood. It goes well with what you have wrote!