With all the rain we’ve been having in the last couple of days, we suddenly had flooding on the north side of the house in an area where we have never had flooding before. The drainage system was overwhelmed and the house was starting to take in water into the basement.
I was able to jury rig up an old pond pump to suck water out of the area that was flooding and discharge it down the hill. The pump even with its very high flow rate was barely able to keep up with the amount of water coming down the hill.
I created a mud dam around the house to help keep the water from coming into the first floor.
Down in the basement, the sump pump was almost overwhelmed by all of the mud coming down through the foundation. We had to shovel out several buckets of mud.
The line of pipes and roof caps that I setup to channel water away from the house with the pump. We had to run the pump all night long until the rain stopped in the morning and the water finally stopped coming down the hill.
The aftermath.
What a muddy mess!
Another heavy rainstorm was starting up so we went looking for the source of the water up the hill.
We found water bubbling out of the ground above the house. During the 1996 floods, we saw the same thing where gopher and other underground animal burrows filled with water and created geysers in the pastures.
We cut a trench through the woods and intersected several holes that were flowing with lots of water.
This trench was able to channel the water away from where it would get to the house.
We channeled the water along the side of the garden and into the front lawn. There was probably 20 gallons a minute flowing onto the lawn throughout the next storm.
The creek down in the woods was going nuts the entire time during all of this flooding, too!