The Weather

[Brontoburglar]

I know you've probably said this previously, but is this all groundwater? How is your yard sloped?

I still have PTSD from all the times my basement flooded and I had to stay up all night with wet vacs, so I totally can relate. it's terrible.

Looks like the wife saved out guest room, but the mudroom carpet is soaked and probably water under the steps. Not sure if I need a remediation company for that, or just replace the rug and hope the water evaporates. Wife is deadset on selling the house now, as the patio guy said there is nothing else we can do to mitigate future damage.

The backyard is on a slight slope towards the back of the house. The house is weird, kind of built sideways with the patio off the back corner of the house. Tons of underground water runs off the backyard, across the patio and towards the driveway. Patio guy has made numerous attempts to mitigate, patched a hole in the foundation and tarred the foundation where water first came in. Then but a drain in the patio in front of the sliding door after the water on the patio was high enough to get in through the door. He put in a sump pump in the backyard where the underground water was the worst, and that pumps out to the opposite side of the house. We need a new driveway anyways, so I want to see if they can pitch the driveway away from the garage, and run some drains from the patio out towards the street.

do you have french drains anywhere, or is the yard not sloped enough that it's even possible?

[The Sybian]

I know you've probably said this previously, but is this all groundwater? How is your yard sloped?

I still have PTSD from all the times my basement flooded and I had to stay up all night with wet vacs, so I totally can relate. it's terrible.

Looks like the wife saved out guest room, but the mudroom carpet is soaked and probably water under the steps. Not sure if I need a remediation company for that, or just replace the rug and hope the water evaporates. Wife is deadset on selling the house now, as the patio guy said there is nothing else we can do to mitigate future damage.

The backyard is on a slight slope towards the back of the house. The house is weird, kind of built sideways with the patio off the back corner of the house. Tons of underground water runs off the backyard, across the patio and towards the driveway. Patio guy has made numerous attempts to mitigate, patched a hole in the foundation and tarred the foundation where water first came in. Then but a drain in the patio in front of the sliding door after the water on the patio was high enough to get in through the door. He put in a sump pump in the backyard where the underground water was the worst, and that pumps out to the opposite side of the house. We need a new driveway anyways, so I want to see if they can pitch the driveway away from the garage, and run some drains from the patio out towards the street.

do you have french drains anywhere, or is the yard not sloped enough that it's even possible?

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

[The Sybian]

Rain ended up not being too bad, just a tiny bit of water on the bathroom floor.

[mister d]

“Rain”

[Brontoburglar]

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

I now find myself wanting to re-landscape your yard and solve this issue for whatever weird reason

[cerranoredux]

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

I now find myself wanting to re-landscape your yard and solve this issue for whatever weird reason

Another NJ swamp-up?

[sancarlos]

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

I now find myself wanting to re-landscape your yard and solve this issue for whatever weird reason

After we had flooding problems some years ago, we re-did the backyard, adding some slope and a french drain and a dry well. Works great.

[The Sybian]

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

I now find myself wanting to re-landscape your yard and solve this issue for whatever weird reason

We'll put you up. Extra incentive, the room that floods is the guest room, so work to stay dry!

[MaxWebster]

Syb- ugh. Echoing everyone else in here, just awful - sorry as hell to read all that.

(i'll note but not complain about my basement getting water seeping up from the ground in 2 big spots. i sprinkled some baking soda on it, i'm sure that'll take care of everything #professionalhomeowner)

- - -

am middle-aged now (fk) and yet still am always like a little kid amazed at localized weather. We got awful wind and overnight about 7" (a few larger drifts in the backyard) but has been almost completely clear-sky sunny (and quite cold) since 1pm here - 1 block north of the city. My buddy who lives in Hamburg 10 miles away is getting 3-5" per HOUR with blizzard winds.

Just hoping for I-90 to be open/clear tomorrow at 9am for the drive to PIttsburgh....

[Pruitt IV]

Syb- ugh. Echoing everyone else in here, just awful - sorry as hell to read all that.

(i'll note but not complain about my basement getting water seeping up from the ground in 2 big spots. i sprinkled some baking soda on it, i'm sure that'll take care of everything #professionalhomeowner)

- - -

am middle-aged now (fk) and yet still am always like a little kid amazed at localized weather. We got awful wind and overnight about 7" (a few larger drifts in the backyard) but has been almost completely clear-sky sunny (and quite cold) since 1pm here - 1 block north of the city. My buddy who lives in Hamburg 10 miles away is getting 3-5" per HOUR with blizzard winds.

Just hoping for I-90 to be open/clear tomorrow at 9am for the drive to PIttsburgh....

But the game's in Buffalo!

[The Sybian]

am middle-aged now (fk) and yet still am always like a little kid amazed at localized weather. We got awful wind and overnight about 7" (a few larger drifts in the backyard) but has been almost completely clear-sky sunny (and quite cold) since 1pm here - 1 block north of the city. My buddy who lives in Hamburg 10 miles away is getting 3-5" per HOUR with blizzard winds.

I still can't believe the localized weather events. I still about the day we had 36 inches of snow in one day on campus, then driving off camopus the next day and a mile away there was one maybe 4 inches, another mile nothing. Or the number of times my mother called me asking how bad the snow was, because she heard massive blizzard in Buffalo, and we got nothing. And it's funny you called out Hamburg, because in my memory, it was always in Hamburg.

[Giff]

3 wind chill this morning. And our bedroom is about 20 degrees colder than the rest of the house.

[MaxWebster]

it's always a "fun" crapshoot as to who gets hammered....but yes: it's always Hamburg.

I still can't believe the localized weather events. I still about the day we had 36 inches of snow in one day on campus, then driving off camopus the next day and a mile away there was one maybe 4 inches, another mile nothing. Or the number of times my mother called me asking how bad the snow was, because she heard massive blizzard in Buffalo, and we got nothing. And it's funny you called out Hamburg, because in my memory, it was always in Hamburg.

[MaxWebster]

i know - my girls and i had a blast last night hooting it up in the Pittsburgh/enemy territory hotel room. the youngest (Pitt freshman) said "Go Bills" to all the workers wearing Steelers gear at the Pens game (all in fun obvs)

*extreme local WNY reference warning*

so our drive to Pittsburgh yesterday - we left at 9am - was very dicey on I-90 from just south of the Galleria Mall [Cheektowaga] through West Seneca and then just south of ...ahem...Hamburg it was sunny all the way to Pittsburgh.

Today's return drive...holy shit. Bad from the start in Oakland and for 10 minutes north of Erie was arguably the worst drive of my life. Total whiteout, couldn't see 4' beyond the car in any direction and there were no tracks. Eventually saw many cars way way off the road including a few semis.

The ironic part was that the only easy/safe/fast part of the drive.... was from Hamburg home.


(oh and the area is getting 1'-3' more from tomorrow morning through Thursday. nice.)

Syb- ugh. Echoing everyone else in here, just awful - sorry as hell to read all that.

(i'll note but not complain about my basement getting water seeping up from the ground in 2 big spots. i sprinkled some baking soda on it, i'm sure that'll take care of everything #professionalhomeowner)

- - -

am middle-aged now (fk) and yet still am always like a little kid amazed at localized weather. We got awful wind and overnight about 7" (a few larger drifts in the backyard) but has been almost completely clear-sky sunny (and quite cold) since 1pm here - 1 block north of the city. My buddy who lives in Hamburg 10 miles away is getting 3-5" per HOUR with blizzard winds.

Just hoping for I-90 to be open/clear tomorrow at 9am for the drive to PIttsburgh....

But the game's in Buffalo!

[DaveInSeattle]

Seattle got hit with freezing rain overnight, which is nasty. I wiped out (once HARD) in about 1.5 miles of my bike commute, so I turned around and very slowly returned home.

[mister d]

Today's return drive...holy shit. Bad from the start in Oakland and for 10 minutes north of Erie was arguably the worst drive of my life. Total whiteout, couldn't see 4' beyond the car in any direction and there were no tracks. Eventually saw many cars way way off the road including a few semis.

Definitely not the reaction I would have had seeing many cars way way off the road.

[MaxWebster]

...goddammit...



(that took me a minute but then I CONSIDERED THE SOURCE ;P)

Today's return drive...holy shit. Bad from the start in Oakland and for 10 minutes north of Erie was arguably the worst drive of my life. Total whiteout, couldn't see 4' beyond the car in any direction and there were no tracks. Eventually saw many cars way way off the road including a few semis.

Definitely not the reaction I would have had seeing many cars way way off the road.

[Nonlinear FC]

This is borderline Random Thoughts material, but while most of us are dealing with some form of frozen precip this week:

So, yesterday, my morning huddle got canceled, which meant I could snooze a bit and get to the chore of clearing off the sidewalk, driveway and cars at my leisure. Somewhere during that dozing, I look over and my phone is light-up with a notification from my Ring App.

Shit!!

Before I loaded the video I knew what it was... Intrepid kids out with shovels, offering to clear things out for whatever nominal fee. Fuck! I'm a little OCD when it comes to this stuff, and especially around here, we tend to get wet snow and if you walk (or God forbid drive) on the fresh stuff and let it sit, you can create ice/cement footprint/tread marks that can be an absolute bitch to scrap off.

Hustled my butt out the door before that stuff could freeze and handled business.

(Also noticed that a few of my neighbors have started copying my move of moving the cars into the cul-de-sac to knock off the bulk of the snow before the plows come... not having to shovel my driveway twice. Trendsetter!!!)

[The Sybian]

One drain in front of the sliding door. Patio guy said not enough pitch to the driveway for additional drains. I need to find someone more experienced who might have some additional ideas.

I now find myself wanting to re-landscape your yard and solve this issue for whatever weird reason

After we had flooding problems some years ago, we re-did the backyard, adding some slope and a french drain and a dry well. Works great.

Curious what this kind of work ran you. I had a paving/water diversion guy come out and suggested a dry well. He is going to dig a 7 foot deep hole in the center of the top part of my driveway and install a dry well. He'll run an underground pipe with holes in the top across the front of my backyard to collect the ground water runoff and pipe that into the dry well. He is going to rip up and repitch part of the patio and driveway, as he needs to rip up the patio to run the pipes from the backyard. Then he is going to tie in the gutters from the back half of my house into the well, and run the front half into the street under the driveway. He will tie in the current drain to nowhere into to the dry well too. Previous estimates for the driveway were $12-$15k without any of the water piping. He said he should be able to the drywell and water piping now, as the ground isn't frozen yet, but he has to wait until March or April for the driveway.

My concern here is piping all of the water to a well under my driveway. He said the well empties into the ground, basically holes throughout the well to allow the water to drain into the soil. He insisted multiple times that the ground can absorb that much water, but it makes me nervous. Last year's (maybe two years ago) hurricane had a rapidly moving river running from my backyard through across the patio and down the driveway. This was the storm that I vacuumed over 400 gallons of water out of my guest room. I told him, we'll see. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "it's 7 feet deep, it won't affect the driveway." If I understood his heavy accent correctly, it'll leave me with a manhole cover in my driveway. Not a good look, but better than flooding.

[sancarlos]

We had a landscaping guy do it. He and my wife designed it. I have a small backyard so wasn’t a big job. Personally, my only involvement was paying for it.

[elflaco2]

school cancelled for tomorrow by 7pm --
latest forecast has 1-3 inches, starting at 7a tapering by 2p

oh and the school year gets extended by a day.

what a joke.

[The Sybian]

school cancelled for tomorrow by 7pm --
latest forecast has 1-3 inches, starting at 7a tapering by 2p

oh and the school year gets extended by a day.

what a joke.

Ours called an early dismissal for today yesterday afternoon with potential for closing. School normally ends at 3:00, early is 12:30. Snow was expected to start around 7 or 8 and stop around 1 or 2. Sending them home at the worst possible time.

[A_B]

They've been off all week here. But they are using "non-traitional instruction" so it doesn't extend into the summer. Kids just have to go get assignments off internet.

[L-Jam3]

My guys had off Tuesday and Wednesday, but now they're doing a remote learning day. Their school district only has three snow days factored into the schedule.

[Brontoburglar]

Curious what this kind of work ran you. I had a paving/water diversion guy come out and suggested a dry well. He is going to dig a 7 foot deep hole in the center of the top part of my driveway and install a dry well. He'll run an underground pipe with holes in the top across the front of my backyard to collect the ground water runoff and pipe that into the dry well. He is going to rip up and repitch part of the patio and driveway, as he needs to rip up the patio to run the pipes from the backyard. Then he is going to tie in the gutters from the back half of my house into the well, and run the front half into the street under the driveway. He will tie in the current drain to nowhere into to the dry well too. Previous estimates for the driveway were $12-$15k without any of the water piping. He said he should be able to the drywell and water piping now, as the ground isn't frozen yet, but he has to wait until March or April for the driveway.

My concern here is piping all of the water to a well under my driveway. He said the well empties into the ground, basically holes throughout the well to allow the water to drain into the soil. He insisted multiple times that the ground can absorb that much water, but it makes me nervous. Last year's (maybe two years ago) hurricane had a rapidly moving river running from my backyard through across the patio and down the driveway. This was the storm that I vacuumed over 400 gallons of water out of my guest room. I told him, we'll see. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "it's 7 feet deep, it won't affect the driveway." If I understood his heavy accent correctly, it'll leave me with a manhole cover in my driveway. Not a good look, but better than flooding.

there isn't a logistical/feasible way to get the water in the front yard to a storm sewer in the street?

[Gunpowder]

Water always seems to find the route you don't want it to find; I'd be skeptical too.

Syb, I would seriously post that to some applicable reddit thread and see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

[elflaco2]

school cancelled for tomorrow by 7pm --
latest forecast has 1-3 inches, starting at 7a tapering by 2p

oh and the school year gets extended by a day.

what a joke.

Ours called an early dismissal for today yesterday afternoon with potential for closing. School normally ends at 3:00, early is 12:30. Snow was expected to start around 7 or 8 and stop around 1 or 2. Sending them home at the worst possible time.

so far a few flurries. nothing sticking. what a wasted snow day (so far - i get that they do it out of an abudnance of caution, yada, yada.. and that forecasting is more luck than skill.. but this appears a huge miss)

[A_B]

Is it super cold? They called off one day here because they didn't want kids at the bus stops it was so cold.

[mister d]

We're on a half-day here because they want to avoid another Ice Disaster of 2018/2019 (I can't remember).

[rass]

We're on a half-day here because they want to avoid another Ice Disaster of 2018/2019 (I can't remember).

UGH

I'm not sure what I did after I got home that evening but I was a lot calmer at that point than I was in the car. Just about the worst.

[rass]

The oldest got her license late last February, and I don't think we let her start driving to school until sometime in March, and last winter was especially mild (or at least snow-free) anyway, so I'd like to welcome "worrying about your kid driving in wintery weather" to the roster of concerns.

[elflaco2]

Is it super cold? They called off one day here because they didn't want kids at the bus stops it was so cold.

28 now
its been much colder earlier in the week.

[mister d]

UGH

I'm not sure what I did after I got home that evening but I was a lot calmer at that point than I was in the car. Just about the worst.

Man, that was insane. She was never the biggest kid, so the weight of carrying her a mile wasn't all that bad, but the constant fear of slipping and falling forward plus her freaking out because she thought I was freezing to death because of the icicles on my beard and ... top 10 kid moment I would not want to re-do. Its ok to look back on, but I might have left her overnight before I did that exact walk again.

[Brontoburglar]

Water always seems to find the route you don't want it to find; I'd be skeptical too.

Syb, I would seriously post that to some applicable reddit thread and see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

"Aha! I have created a slope and low spot for this water to go to"

*heavy rain*

"How is that part of the yard lower than what I created?!"

[Nonlinear FC]

After having pretty much ZERO snow the last two years, we are getting back to back "storms" here in the DMV. I live in a part of the region that usually gets more snow than usual and that is playing out again. About 3-4 inches on Mon-Tues and today the storm is a lot more than they predicted... Probably going to end up with around 5-7 inches when all is said and done.

Not a big deal by Midwest/Northeast norms, but that's a pretty decent snowfall for this area.

I'm not commuting today, so it's all good.

[The Sybian]

school cancelled for tomorrow by 7pm --
latest forecast has 1-3 inches, starting at 7a tapering by 2p

oh and the school year gets extended by a day.

what a joke.

Ours called an early dismissal for today yesterday afternoon with potential for closing. School normally ends at 3:00, early is 12:30. Snow was expected to start around 7 or 8 and stop around 1 or 2. Sending them home at the worst possible time.

School might have called this correct. Flurries started around 10:00, but nothing was sticking. Started to stick to my driveway a little bit around 11:00. School letting out now, not sticking to the streets, but it probably will soon. OTOH, got a notification that my kids' bus broke down. Fortunately they get a ride with my sons' friend.

[The Sybian]

Curious what this kind of work ran you. I had a paving/water diversion guy come out and suggested a dry well. He is going to dig a 7 foot deep hole in the center of the top part of my driveway and install a dry well. He'll run an underground pipe with holes in the top across the front of my backyard to collect the ground water runoff and pipe that into the dry well. He is going to rip up and repitch part of the patio and driveway, as he needs to rip up the patio to run the pipes from the backyard. Then he is going to tie in the gutters from the back half of my house into the well, and run the front half into the street under the driveway. He will tie in the current drain to nowhere into to the dry well too. Previous estimates for the driveway were $12-$15k without any of the water piping. He said he should be able to the drywell and water piping now, as the ground isn't frozen yet, but he has to wait until March or April for the driveway.

My concern here is piping all of the water to a well under my driveway. He said the well empties into the ground, basically holes throughout the well to allow the water to drain into the soil. He insisted multiple times that the ground can absorb that much water, but it makes me nervous. Last year's (maybe two years ago) hurricane had a rapidly moving river running from my backyard through across the patio and down the driveway. This was the storm that I vacuumed over 400 gallons of water out of my guest room. I told him, we'll see. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "it's 7 feet deep, it won't affect the driveway." If I understood his heavy accent correctly, it'll leave me with a manhole cover in my driveway. Not a good look, but better than flooding.

there isn't a logistical/feasible way to get the water in the front yard to a storm sewer in the street?

Front yard is never an issue. Slight slope away from the house and towards the street, don't even get puddles anywhere. As for the front of the house gutters, they currently run onto my driveway and away from the house. Apparently it's not legal to tie into the storm sewer, so everything dumps into the street gutter and into the sewer grates.

[EnochRoot]

I slipped / fell on my ass on the ice taking the trash out last night in our car pad.

Holy shit that hurt. Still hurts, actually.

[mister d]

If it helps, I bet it looked really funny.

[EnochRoot]

If it helps, I bet it looked really funny.

No doubt about that.