Where Does the Water Go?

We bought our house 12 years ago from my ninety year old aunt as she entered the nursing home. It is a nice house; a three bedroom ranch. It was built in 1972, the year my wife and I were married, by my aunt who was then in her seventies, and her husband who was in his eighties. It was built by old people for old people, excuse me: senior people for senior people. It has no steps, except a very tiny one to get into the kitchen from the garage. It has an abundance of closet space, always a nice feature. We bought it because we thought we could grow "senior" in it over the years, and not have to move.

The only problem was that the last improvement to the house was in 1972. So for the past 12 years, the house has been a work in progress as we got rid of the dial telephones, installed cable television, got rid of the 1951 oven that that was brought over from their previous house, and the companion refrigerator!!!! Replaced the roof! Replaced the kitchen counters! Upgraded the bathrooms! Replaced the lawn. Replaced the garage doors. The list kind of goes on and on!

But the house, we discovered, had a hidden fatal flaw. The builder, who had a shady reputation back in the day, didn’t grade the house quite right. He graded the yard to the house rather than the other way around, and the house is set low to the street. What that means is all of the water in the yard goes to the house. We found the lawsuit papers buried in my aunt’s filing cabinet. It cost $60,000.00 to build the house in 1972, and $40,000.00 to “correct” the water problems after the lawsuit.

So…we have a French drain in the driveway to catch the water that rolls down from my neighbor’s yard into the garage. There are all sorts of criss-crossed cement markings in the basement where underground pipes were put to move water from God knows where to God knows where. The basement wall is bowed from water gathering outside the wall. Massive brick support columns were built to keep the basement wall up. My aunt told us that things were under control. Not quite.

We have spent the best part of the last twelve figuring out where the water goes, and correcting the problems. For example, because it is a ranch, there is a huge roof. The water from part of the roof goes into the gutter in the back of the house to a downspout that goes into the ground apparently under the garage which was supposed to go….where? Contractor after contractor could not tell us where that downspout went….perhaps to those criss-crossed pipes under the basement. Where did the water go?

The downspouts we were able to follow were supposed to go to the storm sewer at the corner of the property…except the pipes carrying the water were made out of some sort of papermache and had collapsed backing the water up. Even then, the paper pipes carrying the water were below grade and could not possibly get the water where it was supposed to go because water can’t flow up-hill!!

Which led to our terminally soaked back yard which rotted out a few trees which fell and plunged the neighborhood into darkness for a week when it took out all of the utility lines! Of course, that was the part of the water on the wrong side of an attempted grade redo, the front side still drained to the house, into a hole in the wall in the basement, I kid you not, which somehow managed to get to a sump pump which pumped the water back out of the basement into one of those paper pipes that went to nowhere…except back into the basement.

Having reached the end of our patience, we bit the bullet. First, we brought in somebody who knew how to grade landscaping and completely redid the backyard grade right after they removed the downed rotted trees and accompanying power lines.

We tore out the concrete back walk which was slanted towards the house, and repaved it slanting it the other way.

We didn’t even try to find the existing drainage pipes, and completely redid all of the trenching from scratch making sure that the water flowed “down” to where it was supposed to go in plastic pipes. We redid all of the lines from the driveway French drain. If we didn’t know where a downspout went from the back of the house, we cut it and put an external drain pipe to the driveway to use the French drain protecting the garage.

Then we called in Ohio Waterproofing, and hocked away our financial security for the rest of our lives and had them do a major basement waterproofing job…major being the operative word because the house is a very long ranch thus doubling the waterproofing cost of a normal two story colonial!! The hole through which outside water flowed to the old inside sump pump is now cemented over.

The new sump pump does not pump into a drain, but to a small retention pond we rigged up along the side of the house, into which another drain will be installed this summer to move the water out to the street.

When we bought the house, we knew nothing of these things. Now I understand why the house was on the market for 2 ½ years!!!! So we got the house really cheap. And the good news is that in spite of all of the ultra expensive water work we had to do, (are you ready? Here it comes!!), we are still above water!!!!!!

Where does the water go? Now I know where every drop goes…and our house is blessedly dry.