Sunday, July 10, we got more than six inches of rain at our house.
Oh, sure, some people might say Estevan got up to five inches of rain. But in less than an hour, our entire yard, which is perfectly flat, had more than six inches from the rear fence to the front sidewalk. I measured, and have pictures to prove it.
With a perfectly flat yard, we have correspondingly poor drainage. This has been annoying, but not a true problem until this day. There was more than six inches of water on the outside of our garage door, all trying to get in. This led to a furious battle with me stuffing nearly every towel in the house into the edges of the garage door.
We fought a good battle, but with half a foot of water surrounding the entire house, soon water was seeping into every corner of the basement. Using several shop vacs, a rug shampooes and a dyke built of 12-packs of pop cans in garbage bags and an immersion pump, plus the help of several neighbours, we fought the water back. A few hours later, and we were largely in the clear, except for saturated rugs throughout the basement.
This leads to the lessons learned from a six-inch rain event:
1. When we bought our house in Estevan, there were only four houses on the market in our price range due to the oil boom. Thus, drainage never even crossed our minds. Oops. Don’t forget drainage.
2. From my experience, every house will end up with water in the basement at some point. In 2011, the mammoth flood year that wiped out a large portion of Minot, N.D. we got two inches of rain every Monday for eight weeks. Our basement stayed dry, but almost every other house on our block got water in the basement. This time, houses that got wet then were dry and we got water. The net result is I believe nearly every house at one point or another got water in its basement. This leads to …
3. Never have carpet in the basement. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love rug. A thick underlay is warm and soft under the feet, until it is saturated and will not dry. This means that, eventually, every rug is going to get inundated and it will need to be torn out some day. So enjoy it while it lasts, or never install carpet in the first place.
4. When dry, carpet underlay is as light as a feather. When saturated, it is the most effective sponge mankind has created. You may develop a hernia carrying it out.
5. Having an immersion pump handy and ready to go can save your house.
6. Ensure you have a large wet/dry shop vac. Don’t lose the foam filter.
7. Rubbermaid tubs (or similar models) can be your salvation. While in university, I met a girl whose family kept everything in their basement in Rubbermaid tubs, just in case the basement got wet. We started buying these tubs about 11 years ago, to the point where there is hardly a cardboard box in the house. Nothing in a tub was damaged, but cardboard boxes, not so much. Never store anything irreplaceable on the floor in the basement.
8. Apparently only one insurance policy in Canada covers “overland flooding,” and odds are, you don’t have it. We sure don’t. So you’re going to be paying for expenses out of pocket and praying you get some money out of the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program down the road.
9. Be a good neighbour, always and all ways. As soon as the rain let up a bit, everyone on our street was out, helping each other. Those who were still dry were offering vacuums, fittings, pumps — really, anything! Several came to our place, vacuuming, moving tubs or squeegeeing water out of the garage.
10. Our next door neighbour was four hours away, visiting family. I checked out their house and their basement was flooding, quickly, as the water was over their basement window wells. Another neighbour yelled from across the street, asking what she could do. I told her to call the absent folks and tell them to get their butts home, now. While we fought our battle, the people across the street gained access to that home, brought in pumps and got ahead of the water before it exceeded a foot. As soon as our pump was free, we took it over there. By the time they got home, neighbours and friends had saved their wedding photos and pumped out their basement.
We were very fortunate. We didn’t have nearly the damage some people did. Most importantly, we know how important good neighbours are.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
