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Old September 30, 2012   #1
Rockporter
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Default My back patio flooded in the rain

I thought the water would come in the house when I opened the back door. We went to Lowe's and bought a pump to get the water moving off of the patio and my husband dug a couple of trenches.

This house is a rent house we are looking to purchase and this rain we just got here in the coastal bend flooded the patio. The owner's never added rain gutters and they built a patio cover(open) with lattice on the top of it. When they built this thing they attached the 2" x 8" support beams to the house and did not leave any ability to attach rain gutters.

Then someone built this flat area which measures 20' x 20' that I was planning on using for my container garden. We believe this may have been a pool platform because it is built up and raised above the normal level of the yard and is right up next to the patio and concrete which stops the rain from moving along to the front of the house and out to the street.

The yard slopes which in the best of all worlds would drain the water properly. Now that we had this rain we can see there is a real problem with water runoff. Now we have to figure out how to fix this problem or we are in for a very long winter.

See the pics, the water was less than an inch from my door threshold when the rain stopped. All of my containers were water logged and even my deck boxes had water in them because it seeped in through the bottom. Those only snap together and I can see now that they are not water proof from below.

The first pics are of the 20' X 20' flat area we began prepping for my container garden.

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Old September 30, 2012   #2
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Sorry to hear this. Sounds like someone didn't think it through when they built that. I am in construction and have been sitting here thinking of a an easy cheap way to fix this. There really isn't one and it's hard to say without seeing it.

A grade change would work but very costly and a lot of work. Removing the lattice work and putting in gutters is another idea again a lot of work and somewhat costly. Is there a way to run metal flashing from the shingles down in between the 2X8's and sealing them up with caulk and possibly putting a gutter underneath the 2X8 framing. They should have at least put gutters up if not that a french drain in the pation would have worked well too.

Good Luck.

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Old September 30, 2012   #3
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How long did the water stand on the patio? and how much rain did you receive? If the rain was a Texas Typhoon (2" of rain in 30 minutes) you will have standing water no matter what you do. Short term solution. Put bricks or 2x4 cleats under your containers so they are not sitting in the water.

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Old September 30, 2012   #4
Sun City Linda
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Well, thats not much of a house warming!
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Old September 30, 2012   #5
Rockporter
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Originally Posted by gixxerific View Post
Sorry to hear this. Sounds like someone didn't think it through when they built that. I am in construction and have been sitting here thinking of a an easy cheap way to fix this. There really isn't one and it's hard to say without seeing it.

A grade change would work but very costly and a lot of work. Removing the lattice work and putting in gutters is another idea again a lot of work and somewhat costly. Is there a way to run metal flashing from the shingles down in between the 2X8's and sealing them up with caulk and possibly putting a gutter underneath the 2X8 framing. They should have at least put gutters up if not that a french drain in the pation would have worked well too.

Good Luck.

Dono
Thanks Dono, yes a french drain would have worked wonders but I think your idea of flashing would also be our saving grace. The grade in the yard is great, it's the raised bed area and the design of the patio cover that screwed everything up, if they had just done those right we wouldn't have this problem to contend with.

We have been wracking our brains since the first light rain we had when the roof corner by the door allowed water to splatter the door and a little water collected in the far corner toward the raised 20' X 20' area I am using for my garden area. I think flashing would work perfectly and then we could add that gutter. With that design I might not need to change(make smaller) the garden area if the french drain works as well.

We had already known we would cover the patio completely and use rain gutters to collect the water off of it to use in my rain barrels for the garden and we also knew we had to separate the rain coming off the roof from the patio cover rain so I would have good water. That was to be a chore in itself but now I think using some flashing as you said will allow the water to drain off the roof into a lower rain gutter and keep the rain from the upper level patio cover in it's own gutter system.

Thanks for the idea, I am going to bring that up to my hubby.

We are also putting in some french drain from the far corner of the patio out to the yard and will direct it toward the front of the house so it can run out to the street. I am trying to convince my husband that we could collect the water from the roof as well and use that to water the yard and any plants or trees we decide to plant. There are just far too many projects for him to think about right now so getting rain barrels for the the grass will be a very long time coming.
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Old September 30, 2012   #6
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How long did the water stand on the patio? and how much rain did you receive? If the rain was a Texas Typhoon (2" of rain in 30 minutes) you will have standing water no matter what you do. Short term solution. Put bricks or 2x4 cleats under your containers so they are not sitting in the water.

MikeInCypress
HI MikeInCypress, the water stood far too long and my containers were under water even after we put 2x4's under them. The photos you see were just the beginning of our water issue, by the time it was all over with the water it was at least another two inches higher.

My containers and their drain holes were under water for about six hours and when we used the water pump we got at Lowe's it was gone in about 1 hour. The pump claims to pump 200 gallons per hour and it was defintely pulling alot of water out of that hose. I only wish my rain barrels were already setup, I'd have all of them full and ready for the garden, he he.
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Old September 30, 2012   #7
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Well, thats not much of a house warming!
Hi Linda, I agree and of course they(the owners) say they know nothing about the house and any problems. I can bet they knew all about the problems they created with their stupid design and don't want to pay to fix it. It really amazes me that people design things without really thinking them through and then wonder why their project falls apart.

If only you had seen the ship shod wall they built in the garage to separate the washer and dryer area to make it a separate room. My husband already tore that down and rebuilt it from the ground up, now it looks and holds like it was originally built with the house. I about pushed it over one day when I lost my balance in there and couldn't believe how flimsy the thing was. My husband told me to be careful around it but I didn't know it was that bad.

Thank goodness there are no other issues regarding the house that we know of and the inspector we had take a look before we made an offer told us the same things we knew about and just a couple other small items that needed fixing.

It's all done, now on to the water issue but we won't fix this until we close on the house and that isn't until the end of October. I am not risking putting more money into the house if we don't actually get to buy it. We just wanted it inspected and small things fixed to help with the closing and bypass any potential areas that would need correction prior. I guess this is one of the benefits when you are actually moved in and renting prior to purchase. Oh yeah, we moved in at the end of August and the house was offered for sale in mid September so that was a fast option to purchase.
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Old September 30, 2012   #8
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LOL I have spent 30 years working in real estate. Posession prior to closing is usually full of surprises, often not pleasant. There are so many things that you just dont know, even with an inspection until you use them on a daily basis. Hopefully, your new home will pass all the upcoming tests with flying colors!
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Old September 30, 2012   #9
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So you know all about these pitfalls, lol. It is a VA loan so we want everything as good as it could possibly be to allow for approval of the VA.
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Old September 30, 2012   #10
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"We are also putting in some french drain from the far corner of the patio out to the yard and will direct it toward the front of the house so it can run out to the street. "

Don't do this until you own it because the state Natural Resources people could make you undo it. They have some strange rules about ground water.

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Old September 30, 2012   #11
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Yes, this is true about the ground water but I am at the top of the very small grade in the center of the culdesac, all water runs from the back and into the street. It ends at the end of the street where the drains are.

The yard is at the right grade to allow the water to run off correctly but the design these people put in caused the water to stop it's proper flow. When my husband cut a couple of trenches the water flowed out pretty fast at first and then it slowed down again because the sand filled in the trench area.

We might have to cut the flat area back to about a 15' X 20' area to allow the natural water to flow and I am hoping we don't so I can continue with my container garden plans. I am hoping that a french drain will do the trick even if I have to put it under my flat container area.
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Old June 28, 2022   #12
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Hi everyone, it's time to update the flooded patio thread. We have continued to have issues with the patio flooding all these years, digging trenches helped some, making sure the water was sent toward the street(lower area) and constant push brooming after a storm. The rain gutters helped some but it still wasn't enough because the water just stands on the patio after a rain. We finally got to work on that drainage issue and this is what we have done to alleviate the problem.



First this; The people that were here before put in a pool pad, at least that is what we think it was and it was my garden area. This area was built up with tons of sand and it was all the way to the patio concrete edge. The concrete edge was even with the side of the house where the water should have been draining off and is where my husband has been digging the trenches to get the water to go out down the side of the house to the front. This sand pile was about 18 inches tall so it blocked any water flow we could have had. So, this is how we fixed it.


#1 We dug out two feet of that built up sand area by a 20 foot long section which is the patio concrete area.



#2. We dug out the four 4x4 posts that were set right at the concrete edge which was also part of the stopping water from flowing out. It was part of this very rickety shade cover that if you touched it you knew it would fall apart on top of your head. We took that down the day we signed papers to buy it.


#3. We put in new 4x4 posts at the new edge of the sand because this is what holds my big trellis my husband built for me. It used three posts so we only put back the three needed. Leaving the fourth post out opens the area up better. Actually that fourth post was a short one and I had my garden hose hung on it, but we moved that to the corner of the house instead, and I like it that way better. No post in the way of stepping into the garden.


#4, We put in drainage pipe on the 20' section and added a collector to the gutter drain, then added solid pipe to send it out to the front yard. It was a total of about 70 feet of solid pipe which we dug a trench under the fence to get it out front.


5. Now we bought some retaining wall bricks for keeping the sand back and made a 4 foot wide garden step in area for me. I get dizzy, and I need lots of space to lose my footing so I don't fall down.


6. Final results, no water standing for more than 20 minutes on our patio anymore, and it doesn't reach but about a few feet into the patio and never gets to the back door anymore. Yay, fixed.



Currently my garden is all on my patio on cinder blocks as we were working on that drainage issue and I wanted to make sure we had clearance of rain water. We are clearing the entire side yard to expand the garden from the initial 21 x 24 foot that I think it was to now it will be a pie shaped 30 feet by 50 feet and the 30 foot section is the widest section of the pie. We removed the raised garden beds my husband built because termites and carpenter ants ate them up. We are going to go a different route for raised beds now. We are still deciding on that but we are certain we will use some old castle corner bricks for it. I am still deciding if I want to figure out how to use some steel roofing panels for the sides or not. I definitely do not want anymore wood in my garden.


With the expansion of the garden I will have more cattle panel trellises, I have bought some dwarf fruit trees I put in pots for shade, and will design other shade needs as we go. It will be nice to use that whole side yard for a garden now.


These are the products we used.


Well, haven't used the oldcastle bricks yet but we have purchased them. I like this design but without using wood, and they would have to be much taller. I can't get on the ground with my medical issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehHKjEWRvog


I like this design as well using those blocks. I think three sisters would grow very well there. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/b...ed-garden-bed/



Here is what we used for drainage, it was far easier than using the old rock burrito design.



https://www.lowes.com/pd/NDS-4-in-x-...n-Pipe/3136611


https://www.lowes.com/pd/NDS-12-in-L...Basin/50053663


and of course just solid corrugated pipe to send the water out.


The bricks we used for a retaining wall for the sand is really nice, it isn't the usual brick, and we made a step into the garden using pavers that matched. Belgard Quarry-Goldrush is the color. We used three layers and we used a 4x8 retaining wall cap on top to finish the look. That pic is just a design idea from Belgard.


We used this retaining wall cap, but I think ours is more of a reddish/orange to match up to the belgard bricks. This is the same brick we used for the step into the garden,This is 4 feet wide with one step into the garden. We have retaining wall on both sides of the step so it offers a nice frame out and an invite into the garden. We used paver support underneath and will used the poly sand to lock it all in.






https://www.lowes.com/pd/Chiselwall-...-12-in/3083613





So, the only thing left now is to get that entire garden area level, put down the new weed cloth and move all my containers in and start building more infrastructure for trellises, and shade.
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Old June 29, 2022   #13
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I'm sorry this happened to you. 've been there and it is not fun. I would get out as soon as you can. I've lived in a rented house that totally flooded and have owned two houses that would get water in finished basements when we would have these huge summer rains that seem to be more frequent. I can tell you that getting up to check if the house is wet and having to hope the rain will stop in time, is no way to live. My last two homes have been dry, thank goodness.
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Old June 29, 2022   #14
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Hi bbjm, it's okay, we fixed it now and we bought the house a couple months into renting it way back in 2012. We have done lots of improvements to it, it was just the rain issue we kept dealing with and it's fixed now so we can move on to a new project, like getting the garden set up. Sorry you had to deal with that water issue as well, I agree it is a nightmare.
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Last edited by Rockporter; June 30, 2022 at 01:30 PM. Reason: Spelling
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Old June 29, 2022   #15
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Flooding is so hard to recover from. I know your painful recovery, and the very hard work that many people do not understand. Especially, losing personal Items that is hard to replace.

I Pray that everyone have a gentle Hurricane and Flooding season this year. We all need a break fro Flooding. My Farms are high, but our Home is close to the water.

I am so happy you have recovered fro that Flooding, and have your garden going strong, Amen!!
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