Home Improvement – No Tim Allen needed

So for the last year (yes, it’s been a year now) we’ve been slowly redoing many parts of the house. I’ve replaced ceiling fans. I’ve mounted Televisions. I’ve replaced baseboard/trim in a couple rooms. We’ve repainted. We’ve hung floating shelves. Everything said, the house is coming along nicely, and it almost seems like human adults live there.

One major issue remains that needs to be addressed. Water intrusion.

When we were thinking about buying this place, the previous owner mentioned that there was occasional water intrusion. Neither the Liz or I gave this much thought because

• We’d never bought a house before
• The house looked ok when we walked through/inspected it.

That said, there’s…. Some issues.

When we experience a very heavy rain, we get lots of water working its way into the garage. Once water has made it into this space, it finds its way into the basement.

This is happening for a few reasons:

• Our driveway is slanted downwards towards the house from the street. When rain comes down the curbs along our street, it overflows at the top of the drive and flows down our driveway towards our garage
• Our driveway is also tilts left/right towards the house, rather than away from it (off to the side).
• There are no storm drains on the street to catch torrents of storm water.
• The curbs installed on the street are basically large slabs of stone that are cut into somewhat uniform curb shapes and embedded into the end of everyone’s yards.

I feel like there’s a few ways we could remedy this. I plan on trying to prevent the water from coming into the drive from the street first. Hopefully this will curtail the bulk of our issue.

Next, I plan on creating a barrier at the bottom of our driveway (nearest the house/garage) to redirect water away from our place.

Next, if it comes to this, I’ll install some sort of either Speed Bumps to help divert water or a new French Drain.

I will prevail.