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How to Prevent Garage Flooding from Rain

Are you struggling to keep rain water from pooling in your garage? This is an unfortunately common struggle with houses positioned at the bottom of a hill or with a down-sloping driveway. However, POM Waterproofing is happy to assure you that there is a very effective solution. Here’s how you can prevent garage flooding when it rains near your home.

Trench and French

The solution to garage flooding is actually very simple. To keep rain water out of your garage, all you need is a combination of a trench drain and a French drain. These are two kinds of drains that, when used together, can stop water in its tracks and reroute it.

The trench drain is installed in front of the garage, spanning the length of the garage entrance. This small, unobtrusive drain has slots in it that allow water to flow into it. From there, the trench drain connects to the French drain, which directs the water elsewhere.

Redirecting Rain Water

What exactly does it mean to redirect rain water? It’s not as hard as it sounds. Instead of letting water just pool inside a drain and stay there, we install a French drain as well. The French drain connects the lower end of the trench drain and runs further away from the house. This French drain gives the same assistance to your yard that a ditch gives to the roads. It simply moves runoff to somewhere less obtrusive. 

If you have a ditch near your house, the French drain may be able to simply connect there and dump the rain water from your driveway into a public drain. If there’s no ditch in sight, that’s no problem at all. The French drain doesn’t need an outlet. It can simply offload excess water into the ground, far enough away from your house that it’s at no risk of running back toward it.

The Process

The process of installing these drains can be slightly involved. If you have a cement driveway, we may need to break away the part closest to the garage entrance to allow space for your new trench drain. Any gaps between the driveway and trench drain upon completion can be patched up easily. 

Dirt or gravel driveways are even easier to install in. We’ll have to dig a small trench across the front of the garage entry, but can cover the area with gravel again when we’re done. In the case of a dirt driveway, the trench drain will remain visible.

The French drain will likely involve digging a small trench through your yard. However, we can dig this along the side of the driveway, avoiding damage to your landscaping. It’s also possible for grass to be pulled back during the trench digging process and then pushed back into place aftward, as the surface layer of dirt is held together by grass roots. That makes the French drain installation process fairly easy to recover from, visually.

Reliable Installation

If you’re looking for reliable French drain installation, trench drain installation, or general help to prevent garage flooding in Toronto, POM Waterproofing is the place to call. We look forward to working with you.

The Danger of Ignoring Basement Moisture

It’s not uncommon for basements to have stone walls. There are unfinished basements with stone walls as well as finished ones. Not everyone opts for drywall when deciding on their finished basement. For some, a coat of paint or raw brick is just more appealing. However, with stone basement walls comes the ability to spot basement moisture. While many people are fine with ignoring basement moisture, POM Waterproofing is here to let you know why this could be a terrible – and costly – mistake.

Where Does It Come From?

The first thing you need to know is, where is your basement moisture coming from? In some cases, basement moisture is just condensation. This comes from your basement walls being uninsulated. Therefore, when they get cold, the moisture in your warm basement collects there. This is the same way your glass of lemonade sweats on a hot day.

However, ignoring this moisture without confirming that it’s condensation can be dangerous. That’s because, on the flip side, you can also get moisture on your basement walls from leaking cracks. If your basement walls have cracks in them, even tiny ones that you can barely see, they can leak in moisture and water from the ground outside.

What Does It Mean?

If your basement walls are leaking moisture in from outside, it doesn’t actually mean a whole lot. Simply put, your basement walls are stone, and stone is fallible against water. Water is able to erode stone at a surprisingly fast rate. Even if your house is only 10 years old, it may be leaking exterior moisture into the basement.

However, while the leaking itself isn’t complicated, the result of it might become complicated. Let’s look at how this can cause long term damage.

Long Term Damage

Basement moisture isn’t something to scoff at. It can go from a slightly damp wall to something worse in no time at all. Here’s how:

The first danger of ignoring moisture problems is the potential for mold growth. Mold loves moisture even more than it loves outright water. When your basement walls are damp all the time, they provide an environment for mold to thrive. This mold can grow directly on the walls, spread to your carpet, get into your subfloor, and ultimately rot the structure of your house. Mold may seem like a mild irritant on the outside, but it can quickly turn deadly.

Not only does moisture risk the rotting of any wooden structural elements, it also poses serious health risks. Even for people who aren’t asthmatic or allergic to mold, breathing in mold spores can cause COPD, pneumonia, and more. This risk is even higher if you have carpeting in your basement, as each step on carpet contaminated with mold will force spores into the air. Mold in carpet is not always visible from the surface, and spores can come through from beneath, leading to an easy-to-miss health risk, all because of wall moisture.

Preventing Basement Moisture

The best way to prevent basement moisture is to confirm the source and take steps to block that source. Condensation is less than ideal, but can be avoided with a dehumidifier. Leaking basement walls, on the other hand, are best managed with exterior basement waterproofing or damp proofing. Give us a call at POM Waterproofing today and we’ll come out to assess your basement as soon as possible.