Protect Your Home From Flooding

 How to defend against flood­ing in your home or busi­ness
Once again, it’s spring in Cana­da. The news is filled with images and sto­ries of flood­ed homes, base­ments and busi­ness­es. The pho­tos are daunt­ing and heart­break­ing. In extreme cas­es, not much prepa­ra­tion can be done besides mov­ing to high­er ground. How­ev­er, in many less severe cir­cum­stances, some things can be done for ear­ly detec­tion and pre­ven­tion.

Here are some tips that can help!

1. Assess the land­scap­ing around your build­ing. Over time for many rea­sons, the grad­ing should move water away from the build­ing’s foun­da­tion. Spring is an excel­lent time to ensure that prop­er grad­ing allows grav­i­ty to take the water away from your build­ing intact. Make sure flower beds don’t block water flow away from your build­ing.

2. Your struc­ture should also have well-main­tained and ade­quate­ly installed troughs along your eaves and down­spouts that direct water at least 6 feet away from your foun­da­tion. In old­er homes, some down­spouts were con­nect­ed to weep­ing tiles or home drains; these should be dis­con­nect­ed and capped. It can over­whelm the gut­ters, and the water will return to your base­ment. It also adds stress to the city sew­ers.

3. Bud­get cuts have reduced street main­te­nance in many towns and cities. This results in storm drains that are cov­ered in debris or blocked with sand and leaves. Check the street sew­er grates near your home or office, and if some sim­ple sur­face clean­ing is required, do it; if the sew­er appears to be severe­ly blocked, noti­fy your local city works depart­ment asap so it can be cleaned pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Get­ting the sur­face water drained away quick­ly pro­tects all the prop­er­ties in the area.
   Some things can be done inside your home to pre­vent flood­ing and min­i­mize dam­age should a flood occur.
4. If you are in an area vul­ner­a­ble to flood­ing and high ground­wa­ter, installing a sump in your base­ment may be wise. If you already have a sump pump, con­sid­er installing a bat­tery back­up; floods are often simul­ta­ne­ous with storms and pow­er out­ages, so a back­up bat­tery may save your base­ment from water dam­age.
5. If your build­ing is in a city or town with munic­i­pal water and sewage, you may want to con­sid­er installing a back­wa­ter valve. A back­wa­ter valve is a back­flow pre­ven­tion device that pre­vents out­bound water from re-enter­ing — “back­flow­ing” into a home. The valve con­tains a flap that allows water to exit the house but clos­es to pre­vent the back­flow into the home. Some munic­i­pal­i­ties have sub­sidy pro­grams that will help cov­er some or all of the instal­la­tion cost of this valve.
6. Your build­ing’swa­ter sup­ply should have a shut-off valve where the sup­ply pipe enters your build­ing. Ensure this valve is in good work­ing order (not seized up), and turn the sup­ply off if you leave your place for extend­ed peri­ods. This will pre­vent dam­age from a burst pipe in your absence.
7. To lim­it expo­sure to water dam­age, put appli­ances, like fur­naces, on pedestals to get them off the base­ment floor. Keep all elec­tric wiring and out­lets as high as pos­si­ble on base­ment walls. Try not to store heir­looms, and valu­able doc­u­ments in the base­ment, espe­cial­ly on the floor.
8. Your home Alarm Sys­tem can also help. If you haven’t already added water detec­tion devices in the base­ment and your laun­dry room, it’s time to ask your ser­vice provider. These devices can pre­vent 110’sof thou­sands of dol­lars in water dam­age through ear­ly detec­tion.
9. Although the weath­er is warm­ing up now, we know that the win­ters are long in Cana­da. A sig­nif­i­cant cause of water dam­age is a burst pipe due to it being frozen. Add a low-tem­per­a­ture sen­sor to your alarm mon­i­tor­ing plan to alert you BEFORE your pipes freeze.
10. Check your insur­ance pol­i­cy. Many stan­dard insur­ance poli­cies have very lim­it­ed or NO flood cov­er­age. Ask about the cost of adding flood insur­ance to your home, espe­cial­ly if you are in an ear prone to flood­ing.
    It’s essen­tial to have a plan for what to do if a flood threat occurs. If you need to evac­u­ate the build­ing, have a list ready of “o do’s” It should include tak­ing essen­tial doc­u­ments with you, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Home insur­ance papers, pass­ports etc., and it may be a good idea to turn off the gas and elec­tric­i­ty. How­ev­er, con­tact local author­i­ties for advice on what to do and where to go! Safe­ty first!