Tag Archives: floods

How to avoid wet basements

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My house is surrounded my mulch — it absorbs enough rainwater that I rarely have to water.

Generally speaking water gets to your basement from rain, and the basic way you avoid wet basements is by providing some more attractive spot for the rainwater to go to. There are two main options here: divert the water to a lake or mulch-filled spot at least 8 feet away from your home, or divert it to a well-operated street or storm drain. My personal preference is a combination of both.

At right I show a picture of my home taken on a particularly nice day in the spring. Out front is a mulch-filled garden and some grass. On the side, not shown is a driveway. Most of the rain that hits our lawn and gardens is retained in 4 inches of mulch, and waters the plants. Four inches of mulch-covered ground will hold at least four inches of rainwater. Most of the rain that hits the house is diverted to downspouts and flows down the driveway to the street. Keeping some rainwater in the mulch means you don’t have to pay so much to water the trees and shrubs. The tree at the center here is an apple tree. I like fruit trees like this, they really suck up water, and I like the apples. We also have blueberries and roses, and a decorative pear (I like pears too, but they are messy).

In my opinion, you want some slope even in the lawn area, so excess rainwater will run to the sewers and not form a yard-lake, but that’s a professional preferences; it’s not always practical and some prefer a brief (vernal ) lake. A vernal lake is one that forms only in the spring. If you’ve got one, you may want to fill it with mulch or add trees that are more water tolerant than the apple, e.g. swamp oak or red cedar. Trees remove excess water via transpiration (enhanced evaporation). Red Cedars grow “knees” allowing them to survive with their roots completely submerged.

For many homes, the trick to avoiding a flooded basement is to get the water away from your home and to the street or a retention area.

When it comes to rain that falls on your hose, one option is to send it to a vernal lake, the other option is to sent it to the street. If neither is working, and you find water in your basement, your first step is to try to figure out where your rainwater goes and how it got there. Follow the water when it’s raining or right after and see where it goes. Very often, you’ll discover that your downspouts or your driveway drain into unfortunate spots: spots that drain to your basement. To the extent possible, don’t let downspout water congregate in a porous spot near your house. One simple correction is to add extenders on the downspouts so that the water goes further away, and not right next to your wall. At left, I show a simple, cheap extender. It’s for sale in most hardware stores. Plastic or concrete downspout pans work too, and provide a good, first line of defense agains a flood basement. I use several to get water draining down my driveway and away from the house.

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your driveway or patio slopes to your house. If this is the case, and if you are not quite ready to replace your driveway or patio, you might want to calk around your house where it meets the driveway or patio. If the slope isn’t too great, this will keep rainwater out for a while — perhaps long enough for it to dry off, or for most of the rainwater to go elsewhere. When my driveway was put in, I made sure that it sloped away from the house, but then the ground settled, and now it doesn’t quite. I’ve put in caulk and a dirt-dam at the edge of the house. It keeps the water out long enough that it (mostly) drains to the street or evaporates.

A drain valve. Use this to keep other people’s sewer water out of your basement.

There is one more source of wet basement water, one that hits the houses in my area once a year or so. In our area of Oakland county, Michigan, we have combined storm and sanitary sewers. Every so often, after a big rain, other people’s rainwater and sanitary sewage will come up through the basement drains. This is really a 3rd world sewer system, but we have it this way because when it was put in, in the 1900s, it was first world. One option if you have this is to put in a one-way drain valve. There are various options, and I suggest a relatively cheap one. The one shown at right costs about $15 at Ace hardware. It will keep out enough water, long enough to protect the important things in your home. The other option, cheaper and far more hill-billy, is to stuff rags over your basement drains, and put a brick over the rags. I’ll let you guess what I have in my basement.

Robert Buxbaum, June 13, 2019

Beavers, some of the best dam builders

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I ran for water commissioner in 2016 (Oakland county, Michigan; I’ll be running again in 2020), and one of my big issues was improving our rivers. Many are dirty and “flashy”. Shortly after a rain they rise too high and move dangerously fast. At other times, they become, low, smelly, and almost disappear. There are flash floods in these rivers, few fish or frogs, and a major problem with erosion. A big part of a solution, I thought, would be to add few small dams, and to refurbish a few others by adding over-flow or underflow weirs. We had a small dam in the middle of campus at Michigan State University where I’d taught, and I’d seen that it did wonders for river control, fishing, and erosion. The fellow I was running against had been removing small dams in the belief that this made the rivers “more natural”. The Sierra Club thought he was right doing this; the fishing community and some homeowners and MSU alumni thought I was. My problem was that I was a Republican running in a Democratic district. Besides, the county executive, L. Brooks Patterson (also a Republican) was a tightwad. Among my the first stops on my campaign trail was to his office, and while he liked many of my ideas, and promised to support me, he didn’t like the idea of spending money on dams. I suggested, somewhat facetiously, using beavers, and idea that’s grown on me since. I’m still not totally convinced it’s a good idea, but bear with me as I walk you through it.

Red Cedar River dam as seen from behind the Michigan State University Administration Building.

Small dam on the Red Cedar River at Michigan State University behind the Administration Building. The dam provided good fishing and canoeing, and cleaned the water somewhat.

The picture at right shows the dam on the Red Cedar River right behind the Administration building at Michigan State University, looking south. During normal times the dam slows the river flow and raises the water level high enough to proved a good canoe trail, 2 1/2 miles to Okemos. Kids would fish behind the dam, and found it a very good fishing spot. The slow flow meant less erosion, and some pollution control. The speed of flow and the height of the river are related; see calculation here. After a big rain, a standing wave (a “jump”) would set up at the dam, raising its effective height by three or four feet. Students would surf the standing wave. More importantly, the three or four feet of river rise provided retention so that the Red Cedar did little damage. Some picnic area got flooded, but that was a lot better than having a destructive torrent. Here’s some more on the benefits of dams.

Between July 31 and Aug 1 the Clinton River rose nine feet in 3 hours, sending 130,000,000 cubic feet of water and sewage to lake St Clair.

Between July 31 and Aug 1 the Clinton River rose nine feet in 3 hours, sending 130,000,000 cubic feet of water to lake St Clair.

The Sierra club supported (supports) my opponent, in part because he supports natural rivers, without dams. I think they are wrong about this, and about their political support in general. Last night, following a 1 1/2 inch rain, the Clinton River flash flooded, going from 5.2 feet depth to 14 feet depth in just two hours. My sense is that the natural state of our rivers had included beavers and beaver dams until at least the mid 1700s. I figured that a few well-designed dams, similar to those at Michigan State would do wonders to stop this. Among the key locations were Birmingham, on the Rouge, Rochester, near Oakland University, Auburn Hills, and the Clinton River gorge, and near Lawrence Technical University. If we could not afford to build man-made dams, I figured we could seed some beaver into nearby nature areas, and let the beavers dam the rivers for free. It would bring back the natural look of these areas, as in the picture below. And engineers at Lawrence Tech and Oakland University might benefit from seeing the original dam engineers at work.

Beaver dam on a branch of the Huron River. Beavers are some of the best dam builders.

Beaver dam on a branch of the Huron River. A rather professional and attractive job at a bargain price.

Beavers are remarkably diligent. Once they set about a task, they build the basics of a dam in a few days, then slowly improve it like any good craftsman. As with modern dams, beaver dams begin with vertical piles set into the river bottom. Beavers then fill in the dam with cross-pieces, moving as much as 1000 lbs of wood in a night to add to the structure and slow the flow. They then add mud. They use their hearing to detect leaks, and slowly plug the leaks till the dam is suitably tight. Most of the streams I identified are narrow and pass through wooded areas. I think a beaver might dam them in a few days. Based on the amount of wood beavers move, and the fact that beavers are shaped like big woodchucks, I was able to answer the age-old question: how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood — see my calculation here.

Me, visiting the DNR to talk beavers

Me, visiting the DNR to talk beavers

There are a few things to check out before I start hiring beavers to take care of Oakland county flooding, and I have not checked them all out yet. Beavers don’t necessarily build where you want or as solidly, and sometimes they don’t build at all. If there are no predators, beavers can get lazy and just build a low-water lodge and a high water lodge, moving from one to the other as the river rises and falls. Hiring a beaver is like hiring an artistic contractor, it seems: you don’t necessarily get what you ask for, and sometimes you get more. Given the flash flooding we have, it’s hard to picture they’d make things worse, but what do I know? In some cases, e.g. the Red Run near the 12 towns drain, the need is for more than a beaver can deliver. Still, without beavers, the need would be for a billion gallons of retention on the Clinton alone, a 10 billion dollar project if carried out as my opponent likes to build. So, with no budget to work with, my next stop was at the Department of Natural Resources Customer Service Center (Lansing). I had some nice chats with beaver experts, and I’m happy to say they liked the idea, or at least they were not opposed. I’ve yet to talk to the Michigan director of dams, and will have to see what he has to say, but so far it seems like, if I get elected in 2020, I’ll be looking for some hard-working beavers, willing to relocate. I’d like to leave it to Beaver.

Robert E. Buxbaum, August 2, 2018. I still don’t get the Sierra Club’s idea of what a natural river would look like, or their commitment to Democrats. In my opinion, a river should include beavers, fish, and fishermen, and drainage should be done by whoever can do it best. Sierra club folks are welcomed to comment below.

Follow the feces; how to stop the poisoning

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In Oakland county, we regularly poison our basements and our lake St Clair beaches with feces — and potentially our water supply too. We have a combined storm and sanitary sewer system that mixes feces-laden sanitary sewage with rainwater, and our pipes are too old and small to handle the amount of storm water from our larger rains. A group called “Save Lake St. Clair” is up in arms but the current commissioner claims the fault is not his. It’s global warming, he says, and the rains are bigger now. Maybe, or maybe the fault is wealth: more and more of the county is covered by asphalt, so less rain water can soak in the ground. Whatever the cause, the Commissioner should deal with it (I’m running for water commissioner, BTW). As the chart of toxic outfalls shows, we’ve had regular toxic sewage discharges into the Red Run basically every other week, with no exceptional rainfalls: only 0.9″ to 1.42″.

Toxic outfalls into lake St Clair, Feb 20 to Mar 20, 2016. There were also two outfalls into the Rouge in this period. These are too many to claim they are once in hundred-year events.

Toxic outfalls into lake St Clair, Feb 20 to Mar 20, 2016. There were also two outfalls into the Rouge in this period. These are too many to claim they are once in hundred-year events.

Because we have a combined system, the liquid level rises in our sewers whenever it rains. When the level is above the level of a basement floor drain, mixed sewage comes up into the basement. A mix of storm water comes up mixed with poop and anything else you and your neighbors flush down. Mixed sewage can come up even if the sewers were separate, but far less often. Currently most of the dry outfall from our old, combined sewers is sent to Detroit’s Waste Water Treatment plant near Zug Island. When there is a heavy rain, the pipe to Zug is overwhelmed. We avoid flooding your basement every other week by diverting as much as we can of the mixed storm water and septic sewage to lake St. Clair. This is poop, barely treated, and the fishermen and environmentalists hate it.

The beaches along Lake St Clair are closed every other week: whenever the pipes to Detroit start getting overwhelmed, whenever there is about 1″ or rain. Worse yet, the sewage is enters the lake just upstream of the water intake on Belle Isle, see map below. Overflow sewage follows the red lines entering the Clinton River through the GW Kuhn — Red Run Drain or through the North Branch off the River. From there it flows out into Lake St. Clair near Selfridge ANG, generally hugging the Michigan shore of the lake, following the light blue line to poison the metro beaches. it enters the water intake for the majority of Oakland County at the Belle Island water intakes, lower left.

Follow the feces to see why our beeches are polluted. It's just plain incompetence.

The storm water plus septic sewage mix is not dumped raw into lake St. Clair, but it’s nearly raw. The only treatment is to be spritzed with bleach in the Red Run Drain. The result is mats of black gunk with floating turds, toilet paper and tampons. This water is filtered before we drink it, and it’s sprayed with more chlorine, but that’s not OK. We can do much better than this. We don’t have to regularly dump poop into the river just upstream of our water intake. I favor a two-prong solution.

The first, quick solution is to have better pumps to send the sewage to Detroit. This is surprisingly expensive since we still have to treat the rain water. Also it doesn’t take care of the biggest rains; there is a limit to what our pipes will handle, but it stops some basement flooding, and it avoids some poisoning of our beaches and drinking water.

This is our combined sewer system showing a tunnel cistern (yuk) and the outflow into the Red Run. We can do better

A combined sewer system showing a tunnel cistern. Outflow goes into the Red Run. We can do better.

A second, longer term solution is to disentangle the septic from the storm sewers. My approach would be to do this in small steps, beginning by diverting some storm runoff into small wetlands or French drain retention. Separating the sewers this way is cheaper and more environmentally sound than trying to treat the mixed flow in Detroit, and the wetlands and drains would provide pleasant park spaces, but the project will take decades to complete. If done right, this would save quite a lot over sending so much liquid to Detroit, and it’s the real solution to worries about your floor drains back-flowing toxic sludge into your basement.

The incumbent, I fear, has little clue about drainage or bio-treatment. His solution is to build a $40MM tunnel cistern along Middlebelt road. This cistern only holds 3 MM gallons, less than 1/100 of the volume needed for even a moderate rain. Besides, at $13/gallon of storage, it is very costly solution compared to my preference — a French drain (costs about 25¢/gallon of storage). The incumbents cistern has closed off traffic for months between 12 and 13 mile, and is expected to continue for a year, until January, 2017. It doesn’t provide any bio-cleaning, unlike a French drain, and the cistern leaks. Currently groundwater is leaking in. This has caused the lowering of the water table and the closure of private wells. If the leak isn’t fixed , the cistern will leak septic sewage into the groundwater, potentially infecting people for miles around with typhus, cholera, and all sorts of 3rd world plagues.

There is also an explosion hazard to the incumbent’s approach. A tunnel cistern like this blew up near my undergraduate college sending manhole covers flying. This version has much bigger manhole covers: 15′ cement, not 2′ steel. If someone pours gasoline down the drain during a rainstorm and if a match went in later, the result could be deadly. The people building these projects are the same ones who fund the incumbent’s campaign, and I suspect they influenced him for this mis-chosen approach. They are the folks I fear he goes to for engineering advice. If you’d like to see a change for the better. Elect me, Elect an engineer.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, March 26, 2016. Go here to volunteer or contribute.