I guess you could say we decided to bury our savings in the yard. Again.
We finally had drainage installed along the North side of our house. And not just any old drain, a French Drain.
Because we’re fancy like that.
After our house flooded a year ago tomorrow (I can’t believe it’s been a year!), we knew we had to do something. It wasn’t an ordinary flood where water comes whooshing through the front or back door (which don’t get me wrong, that would straight up stink, too). This was a ground water flood. Where the ground was so saturated, the water literally came up through the floor in our sunken living room. So you would pump it out and it would promptly fill back up.
Awesome, huh?
I guess we could always rethink an indoor pool option. We would have a lovely swim up fireplace. Although I’m not sure that’s a box you could check as an upgrade. At least according to realtors and such.
After several bids, the guy we hired seemed to know what he was talking about and was reasonably priced. (Again kids, don’t let them tell you there isn’t money in digging holes.) We had about 200 feet of french drain put in along with a solid drain for surface water run off and gutter tie-ins.
Here’s a few pictures from the madness.
That is one long orange line.
I can tell you if I were digging that trench, it would be all kinds of wonky. This back part was dug by hand due. Ummm, no thank you.
And yes, that’s clay. This was one project I was SOOOO glad we weren’t DIYing.
The guys finished up a couple of weeks ago, but we haven’t had any real rain. We had a our first huge downpour today and got over 2.5″ of rain. And we’re suppose to get more tomorrow. So far this fancy-pants drain of ours is moving tons of water out of here. And hopefully keeping it out from under our house. The guy who installed it even showed up unannounced (in the pouring rain) just to make sure it was working as it should. Nice.
Maybe I can start to daydream about having a floor in our living room again. Wouldn’t that be crazy?! We could actually fix something we could see. And that’s above ground.
Sounds so crazy pie-in-the-sky. 🙂
