When your front driveway or backyard suffers from flooding, it’s potentially extremely damaging to your home. It might not seem that way at first, but just like how continual exposure to water causes damage to boats, the same is true of home building materials, including support structures, the foundation, and more.
Due to this, it’s best to understand how a yard floods, what damage it can do, and how to deal with the problem before it makes matters worse.
How Does a Yard Become Flooded?
There isn’t just one obvious way that a yard will become flooded. It can happen in a variety of ways, and not all of them are so obvious either.
Here are the main causes:
Thunderstorms
Major thunderstorms pour down considerably more rainwater than the typical brief shower. It’s also possible that they bring in debris from the strong winds. The debris can break things around the yard area including existing guttering and drainage systems.
Blocked Gutters (or No Gutters Installed)
Not all homes have gutters installed. Perhaps it was a cost-cutting move when the home was first built, or the state enjoys plenty of sunshine with few showers throughout the year. In any case, the lack of gutters on the roof means the water runoff from a storm reaches the bottom of the roof and then falls to the yard below.
Even with a home that has gutters installed, a rainstorm can overcome their capacity and/or twigs and other debris can serve to block up the existing gutters. Then they will overflow to the yard.
Poorly Designed Driveway
All driveways should be built at a slight angle to let the water run off safely and away from the property. When a driveway has been designed incorrectly, it tends to allow rainwater to pool in different places which can create additional problems like mosquitoes finding a home there.
Home Below the Water Table
Some homes are situated below the water table or in a valley where they’re more vulnerable to flooding in that part of the state.
What Damage Could You Experience?
The damage from a flooded yard can include the following:
- Exterior walls with paint flaking off or becoming discolored
- Driveway cracks
- Home foundational cracks below the surface
- Damaged gutters that need repairing or replacing
- Flooding into the basement below the yard level
- Ruined yard landscaping
Fixing Yard Drainage Issues
It’s important to sort out yard water drainage after it has flooded before any real damage is caused. This is a race against time to prevent additional costs and subsequent home repairs. Use a company like Helitech Waterproofing which has extensive experience in resolving these kinds of problems for worried homeowners. Look for a team that handles flooding related issues and provides a service to fix up a basement if it has sustained damage.
Besides, should there be problems found with the structure of the home such as cracks in the walls or crawlspace concerns, a solution can be found for these too.
Yard flooding isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. While it’s not a major problem in itself, the consequences of it can be severe.
