Preventing Water Damage in Your Home

Ten tips to pre­vent water dam­age in your home!
Our homes are often described as our cas­tles. It’s a con­stant task to keep our homes safe and secure. We need to address the threats to our homes on many dif­fer­ent fronts. While we often talk about arti­fi­cial threats, in the way as a break and enter­ing or van­dal­ism. Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant risk can come from extreme weath­er or burst pipes result­ing in flood­ed base­ments and water dam­age. Cli­mate change has made us more sus­cep­ti­ble to severe weath­er, which can mean sud­den down­pours with a mon­th’s worth of rain in a few hours. Is your prop­er­ty ready to han­dle this kind of storm with high vol­umes of water in a short time? So how do you pro­tect your­self? Here are a few tips.
1. Prop­er­ty grad­ing. Your land­scap­ing should pro­vide a nat­ur­al path for runoff to move away you’re your home. Your yard should be sloped away from the build­ing. Make sure land­scap­ing and floor beds are not pre­vent­ing water from mov­ing away from your base­ment walls and foun­da­tion.
2. Are your down­spouts and eave troughs in good con­di­tion? Are they free of debris that can cause clogged down­spouts, result­ing in over­flow­ing? Ensure your down­spouts are NOT con­nect­ed to your home­’s weep­ing tiles or City drains. You should install drainage pipes to your down­spouts that take the water at least 6–8ft away from your foun­da­tion.
3. Rethink­ing hard sur­faces around your home is essen­tial. The rain­wa­ter needs places to be absorbed into the ground. Rather than using con­crete or asphalt dri­ve­ways and walk­ways, think about inter­lock­ing brick or stone or loose grav­el or peb­ble paths.
4. If your street has a storm sew­er drain near your home, make sure it’s free and clear. If it’s clogged, call the City. And if water on the street can­not go into the sew­er, it will look for alter­na­tives… caus­ing water dam­age in your base­ment.
5. If you have win­dow wells for your base­ment win­dows, con­sid­er get­ting clear cov­ers for them. Win­dow wells can fill very quick­ly in a down­pour and over­whelm any drainage that may be in place.
Now on the inside of your home, there are also things you can do for pre­ven­tion and ear­ly detec­tion!
6. If you have a sump pump, ensure it’s in good work­ing order and that the pit is free of debris, and con­sid­er a bat­tery back­up sys­tem. Storms often go hand in hand with pow­er fail­ures. The pump won’t help you if it has no pow­er!
7. Con­sid­er adding water sen­sors to your alarm sys­tem. These can be installed in your sump pit, near your wash­ing machine and hot water tank. Get­ting ear­ly noti­fi­ca­tion of a leak can save you from much dam­age.
8. Keep your floor drains clean and clear. Also, ask your plumber about installing a back­wa­ter valve in your drain. A back­wa­ter valve is a device that stops water and sewage from com­ing back into the house dur­ing times of heavy rain­fall. Annu­al main­te­nance of back­wa­ter val­ues is essen­tial.
9. Don’t pour fats, oils and grease down your drains; they may solid­i­fy and con­tribute to a clogged pipe—the last thing you need when your sys­tem is in dis­tress from a storm!
10. Shelv­ing is your friend in a base­ment; try to keep as much stuff as pos­si­ble off the base­ment floor. If you have valu­ables, keep­sakes or heir­looms, con­sid­er that the base­ment might not be the best place for them.

As with many things … an ounce of pre­ven­tion is worth a pound of the cure. Take some time to check out your home to see if you are ready for the next storm because it’s com­ing!