We live at the top of a big hill and have never had water in our basement...until now. On June 30th we had nearly 9 inches of rain fall in the span of about 3 hours. Standing in our basement, I watched as the backyard started to fill with water. At about this point in time, I called the city to let them know our storm drain was backing up, they told me, "It's not just yours, every storm drain in Johnston is backed up, this is just more water than the system can handle." Basically, thanks for your call but there is nothing we can do.
The water kept coming and started to push against the basement slider...yikes!
I was able to create a sort of "funnel" using some old boards and that area rug to funnel the water from the door to the sump pump on the other side of the room! Thankfully that sump pump kept working...this was max of the water in the basement.
At one point, the water was this high up on the slider...that's about 12 inches!!!
I ended up tearing out the damaged drywall and baseboards, we were able to pull up the carpet in 1 piece and get it dried out. Our carpet guys put down new pad and reinstalled the carpet. All in all, it's never fun to get water in your basement, I am very thankful the sump pump kept working and even more thankful for great neighbors who came over and helped! It was also a big blessing that the rain started after the kids were in bed, so they didn't get too worked up about all the water!
