It’s raining again. When storms start arriving close together, it makes us nervous, even though we are in a drought. We love the moisture, but it’s best if the downpours are spread out. When the ground gets saturated, a little stream starts to flow under our house and flood our crawl space, eventually overflowing into the downstairs bedrooms. We can tell when the water is rising because the normally dry earth under our house starts to darken with moisture.
It usually starts with a little trickle down the concrete wall, which turns into small water fall, and then a gushing stream. It pools at the bottom of the stairs, and eventually spills over the threshold into the living space.
There was water running through the lower level when we first looked at the house, and it’s probably part of the reason we were able to afford it; I’m sure some potential buyers decided not to pursue it after slogging through puddles and tracking water through the lower bedrooms.
This house has a drainage problem. We talked to a woman who grew up here–she was selling it after her father died–and she remembered having water down there every winter. I’m sure it used to be worse, before rain became scarce in California.
We’ve tried sealing the wall, but the water just pops out somewhere else. We’ve piled sandbags, and added concrete to guide the water out and around instead of through. The previous owner tried to redirect the water too, with sloppy concrete gutters around the side of the house.
During a storm, the water started flowing and we had to start bailing. It was a team effort, with one daughter scooping water with a big plastic cup into a bucket, another shuttling and emptying buckets, and another using a broom to swish water out the door. My husband dashed out while we bailed and rented a pump. We had to keep it running as long as the water did, a few days after the storm.
After that, we called in a contractor to combat the flooding with a sump pump. He put in a concrete-lined well to collect the water, and a pump in it to move the water out and away from the house. It works beautifully. When the water level rises, we can hear pump start and the water gush out of a pipe and away to the street.
One very stormy night, though, when the rain was falling and the wind was howling, the power went out, taking our pump out of operation. We were back to bailing–by candlelight this time–for hours until the power came back on. If that happens again, we’re ready; we bought a manual pump that we can operate with a foot pedal if the power goes out during a storm.
Unless the drought gets even worse, we will need to eventually dig french drains six feet deep around the foundation in the back of the house where our creek runs. Those will intercept the water before it gets to us and channel it around the house and away without passing through our lower level. We’ve known that we need to do it since before we moved in ten years ago, but the expense and disruption of tearing up the back patio has kept us from taking care of it at the source.
Living in an old house, there are probably a hundred projects like this; they need to be done, but we live with them because the solution is more trouble than we can manage. We patch them up as we go, treating the symptoms without solving the underlying problem. It seems like the right thing to do would be to dig everything up, get to the root of the issue and fix it.
I’ve wanted to do that, but I’m reconsidering how much proactive work is really wise. Less intervention can be the better action; keeping things stable and waiting until the right time to do an overhaul minimizes the pain of it. The back patio is starting to need some repair, so when we redo that, we can revisit the french drain idea.
Taking one thing at a time is a fine approach for an old house. If we tried to address all the problems, we’d never get to enjoy living here. Yesterday, we toured a new house that was built down the street; it’s perfect and gorgeous and free of issues. I left there feeling jealous of the ease of that.
This is our house, though, with all its problems. It’s full of memories and life. The quirks are part of its character; it has personality and charm that a new house hasn’t had time to develop.
I love old houses – even with all their flaws. They have so much character, so much history.