A heavy downpour of rain can be pretty damaging to your home and even cause flooding. This flooding can lead to the destruction of your property along with the environment.
Due to this, you will need to have the solutions in case your backyard gets flooded.
The National Climate Assessment has stated that there has been an increase in severe rainfall over the last thirty years.
This shows that prevention and solutions to home flooding are something that every homeowner should know.
One way of going about this is to ensure that buildings have been adequately equipped to deal with these extreme weather seasons.
By using a few simple tips on your landscape, you will be able to mitigate soil erosion and manage stormwater runoff.
Doing this will help you save thousands of dollars on your property when the next storm and heavy rain comes around.
Below are some solutions to counter backyard flooding in your home. When your home doesn’t have significant vegetation, it becomes easier for the rain to sweep across the floor.
Table of Contents
Swales
Swales are one of the most basic forms of the landscaping of your backyard to prevent flooding.
The swale refers to any depression in the landscape excavated there or was already in existence. The swale helps to redirect the water drainage.
You can improve their effectiveness by lining the lower points with rocks. You can add deep-rooted plants to the slopes as well.
This helps in slowing down the path of the water to the drainage. And since the swale redirects the water flow instead of stopping it, you should channel it to a place where the excess water will be released safely and not become stagnant.
Areas with frequent flooding should have the swales directed into drywall or a garden bed with high water tolerance and good drainage.
It would be best if you never had the swale draining over your property so that you could avoid some utility charges.
Installing A Rain Garden
Another way to combat backyard flooding is by installing a rain garden in the backyard of your home.
When you are constructing a rain garden, you should make sure to place plants that have the highest wet soil tolerance in the middle of the park.
The plants at the garden’s edge will drain adequately, while the one in the middle will remain submerged.
It is always good to use native plants when creating the rain garden. These plants usually require very little to no watering between rainfalls, making for low maintenance of the backyard and cutting down on harmful pesticides.
The rain gardens are a bit similar to swales. However, the rain garden does not redirect the water. Instead, it gives the water a place for it to pool together.
The water will then slowly back into the soil in the garden. Most rain gardens range between 50 to 100 square feet.
Even a small rain garden can help in reducing the amount of flooding.
Heavier Mulch
When there is flooding, it spreads light mulch chis all over, making it hard to clean up and clog the drains. An arborist in Florida, Gregory Scott, has advised that “It floats away immediately. Most hardwood mulches are heavier, and there are some brands made from man-made materials that are low maintenance.”
So it would be best if you looked out for heavy mulch to save yourself from having to clean up all over the backyard every time there is a storm.
Diverting Rain Spouts
You can use a downspout diverter to divert the rainwater. This is an essential tool for preventing flooding next to the walls and getting the water over to the lower ground.
It would help if you also remembered replacing impervious surfaces since most runoff fees are calculated according to the area of waterproof or non-porous surfaces on your property.
Another way to reduce the bill is by lowering the square footage.
Install A Green Roof
Greens roofs are affordable to install, and they are nothing new. This is ideal for houses with flat or modular roofs, and they are pretty popular among people.
Although some people believe that the added weight on the roof will cause extra strain, a study has revealed that green roofs increase the lifespan of the roof.
It is also known that eco-roofs provide insulation and reduce heating and cooling bills.
Draining Driveway
Aside from your roof, the second biggest contributor to the flooding is the driveway.
You can add drainages on either side of the pavement to help in mitigating floods. Another effective solution will be to ditch the concrete and asphalt in favor of gravel, spaced paving, and green grass.
Doing this helps mitigate floods when there are heavy downpours in your area.
Factors That Can Cause Harm To The Foundation Of Your Home
This can be some severe problems that will end up causing some damage to your property.
So once you begin to suspect that there is something wrong with your foundation, you need to act immediately to prevent foundation failure.
Below are some common causes of foundation problems that can affect your home. Please read through and see if you have noticed anything like that anywhere around your home.
If that happens to be the case, then you would need to take action as soon as possible to prevent any further damage to your home foundation and, ultimately, you are home.
Let us now take a look at these common problems below.
Building On Expansive Clay
This is one of the leading causes of foundation problems. You will end up having issues with your home when it is built on top of expansive clay.
This will ultimately lead to foundation failure. When your home is built on expansive clay soil, the foundation can develop problems early.
So this means you should always check when you are purchasing a home to ensure that it has not been built on expansive clay soil.
Badly Compacted Fill Soil
No homeowner wants to come across some trouble with their home’s foundation.
If you just purchased a new home, then any issue you come across will undoubtedly be a shock to you. One of the things that can cause problems for your foundation is the fill dirt under the house’s foundation.
The problem arises if the soil is compacted incorrectly, which can leave the slab-on-grade foundation at high risk.
So if you are in the process of building your own home, you have to make sure that the soil compaction under the foundation is done correctly to avoid any future risk to your foundation.
Extreme Weather Cycles
This is yet another factor that can cause some level of damage to your home’s foundation. Extreme weather cycles can pile on one another and eventually cause some massive damage to the foundation over time.
One of the things you should seriously watch out for is the drastic change of soil moisture around and under your foundation.
This can cause many problems for the foundation, and these problems typically play out in the form of cracks on the foundation.
So anytime you see any cracks beginning to form in the walls of your home or chimney, that should be a signal for you to take immediate action to rectify the problems.
Plumbing Leaks
It would be best if you always were on the lookout for any plumbing leaks in your home that are happening below the slab or your home’s foundation.
This leak can be very insidious because it is complicated to spot it. Due to this, your foundation could suffer some significant damages down below due to the plumbing leak.
Leaks can happen even before you become aware of the leaks and fix them. One of the best ways to check up for a plumbing leak under the foundation is to pay close to the state of the soil around the foundation and look out for any form of moisture that starts appearing there.
The moisture could be your initial clue to unraveling the leak problem. As soon as you spot something like this, you should seek professional help immediately to rectify whatever the problem may be.
Tree Roots Under Foundation
This is one of the biggest and most common foundation problems globally. This is because trees are common and you can find them in almost every house.
However, what most people do not know is that trees roots can cause some damage to the foundation of the house, especially when the tree is a big strong one that has penetrating roots.
The roots of the trees can go under the home’s foundation, which can lead to an upheaval which will then lead to huge cracks appearing in the foundation and on the walls of the house.
If this goes on unchecked, the roots, if quite strong enough, could ultimately topple your home over.
Most of this is generally due to the natural process known as transpiration. This happens when the tree roots suck up the water inside the soil and leave it dry and shriveled. The drying of the ground under your foundation can cause it to settle unevenly.
The only way to tackle this problem is to keep the trees at a distance from the house.
It would be best to plant trees very close to the house, robust trees with penetrating solid roots.
Conclusion
After seeing these factors that can cause some damage to the foundation of your home, it is up to you to always make sure that you check out for those things once in a while.
When you are purchasing a new home, you should do all due diligence by inspecting the soil around the house’s foundation to make sure that nothing is amiss.
It would help if you also looked to see that the trees in the house are at a safe distance away from home itself.
The home you are trying to purchase should surely be up to the industry standards, which means the most reliable standards available.
It would help if you were considering homes with standards to avoid any problems in the future.
The house should meet all the highest safety requirements there is to meet, especially when it comes to the issue of the foundation.
