How to Prevent Basement Flooding
Here is a quick tip by John Jorgenson on how to keep your basement from flooding.
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If your home is equipped with an area way with a drain at the bottom leading to your basement, I'm going to show you a quick tip that can prevent your basement from flooding. During my years in the water damage restoration business, one of the most common ways that basements were flooded was by the areaway drain getting covered with just a few leaves and then a heavy rainstorm would fill the areaway and the water would spill into the basement. Keeping the leaves out of the areaway is your best bet to prevent this from happening but that's not always possible. In the fall you can start the week out with a clean drain and a few windy days and a heavy rainstorm can cover the drain very quickly, it only takes a few leaves. So here's the trick to keeping the leaves off of your drain. Go to your local hardware store and buy a couple of replacement grills that you would normally use for a gas grill or a charcoal grill, I like the heavy-duty grills that are shown here, they're made for a gas grill, and then you buy an industrial rubber mat that you would typically see in the back lines of restaurants, it's a commercial grade mat you can see a photo of it here, it has small holes in it it's about an inch thick and it's a very heavy-duty constructed mat. Clean out the areaway from any debris and simply place the two metal grills down on the ground overtop of the areaway drain. Next, you'll simply lay the rubber mat down on top of the grills so what you're accomplishing by doing this is that you have these grills that are now holding the rubber mat off of the concrete floor which is going to allow water to go outside of the rubber mat and through all the holes of the rubber mat down to the area in between the grill and the concrete. With this configuration, it is going to take many many many leaves you'll literally have to cover the whole entire mat with leaves before that drain is going to get stopped up. In fact, all the years that I've had this set up at my house I've never once had a situation where it even came close to causing a blockage so I'm pretty good about keeping the leaves cleaned out of there but if you get a few weeks where you don't have time to do it this is going to give you some insurance against having your basement flooded so once you get everything in place you're going to want to take the garden hose and turn it on full blast and just make sure everything is configured properly so you don't have a flooded basement. Make sure it's functional before you walk away from it but I think you're going to be very pleased by how this performs over the years.
Copyright © 2019 CJ Jorgenson, LLC. All rights reserved
Пікірлер: 35
Thanks for this brilliant idea. This problem just infuriates me. Followed your idea pretty closely and have made a very similar set up. Looking forward to the next heavy rain day to see how well it does. Thanks for posting!
You are a genius and a heck of a great guy for making this brilliant life hack available! I am learning this 24 hours too late, but will be ready for next time! Sincere thanks!
That’s exactly what I was looking for!!!! There’s a lot of leaves and dirt on the basement entrance. Thanks for the video!!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Great idea this just might solve my problem
This is genius! Going today to get a setup like this
Awesome idea, thanks for the video, I will post results.
I have same issue, Brilliant idea! Thank you for the Video!
Valuable information thank you sir! 🤘
Will this also help keep dirt out of the drain, or is it mostly just to prevent leaf build up?
GENIUS!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely perfect!! Thank you.
Awesome idea!!!!! You save me
great idea i will be doing this!
I had a house with a basement door like that. I had the door double bricked in, rubber coated, tarred and then back filled in with a cement pad over that.
Thank you
The is the best solution!
Do you remove the grill and mat in the winter? Wondering if it’s only for leaves and not needed during the winter
So this is good for a heavy heavy rainstorm?
Mine is vertical, not the horizontal showed in the video. Any recommendations?
Can you tell me the size of your grills and mat?
my home is 80 years old... but with what appears to be the same setup... where does that water go? mine is backed up and tends to overflow into my basement
@tonyharris1965
4 жыл бұрын
French drain is probably clogged. Cut concrete, dig out the rocks, redo the french drain, then seal up and add the grates and mats.
@paulajohnson420
2 жыл бұрын
I’m buying grates and a mat tomorrow. I hate having to run to clean out the leaves on those steps when rain is forecasted but I’d hate it worse if the water got into my basement.
will it leave rust marks on my concreat when i take it out
@tonyharris1965
4 жыл бұрын
Better than flooding.
@paulajohnson420
2 жыл бұрын
Tony Harris, you got that right!
This is genius!!!!!
We are thinking about creating a new entrance to basement but worry about how the rain would be handled. I see small drain like in your video and wonder how long until the basement door would get ruined and let water into basement again.
@shanewhite499
2 жыл бұрын
We had same problem and then busted up bottom step added a small sump basin and sump pump and re concreted over top of it. We used a metal grate for the lid so we can walk on top of it and also to keep leaves out. It has worked great for us so far.
@chromefree
2 жыл бұрын
@@shanewhite499 Would love to see photos …
@shanewhite499
2 жыл бұрын
Mine is kinda like that except I have bilco doors. I got everything I needed at Lowe's.
Haven’t watched the video but I would fill it up with concrete so I don’t have an area way anymore
@Beezchurgar
3 жыл бұрын
I thought the same, but in my area, homeowners with a basement have to have an exit from it
@cantankeroushousewife2942
2 жыл бұрын
Doing some reading and discovered that in 1998 building codes required an Egress from basements built after 1998. If you have a basement that you add a door or window egress you can improve the value of your home by anywhere between $7k-$10k each egress because it adds living Sq ft to the home. In some places putting a family room in a basement without a second egress from the basement is a code violation. Buyers want a finished basement these days, a place they can put in a home office, play area, entertainment area or extra bedroom. An unfinished basement without egress would lower resale value of a home. While it might seem costly to get one in, once finished that one window doubles ie, if it cost 4k to add a door the value of the new living space increases 8k. I'm no expert, I've just been reading while house hunting.
WOOW