Hi, I'm new to the forum and have read a lot of great advice and wondered if I may get some help as well. I have a VERY small backyard and the area that I live in floods often when we get heavy rain. Unfortunately the architects that developed this area years ago, did little to help prevent standing water for many of the current homeowners. The neighbors behind me are on much higher ground, and the result is lots of water in my yard, so much so that if it rains a few days in a week, I have standing, stagnate water in much of my backyard. The lowest point in my backyard is right next to the house and therefore causes flooding in my finished basement (not much fun to clean up). I assume that this has been a problem for some time because 2 of the 4 windows in the basement have been covered over at some time or another.
I have attached pictures of the most recent flooding to show where most of the water collects and hopefully give a visual as to the sloping from our backyard neighbors; these pictures were taken after my husband and I tried a "one day" fix to quickly divert water from sitting directly next to the foundation of the house.
We have the piping to construct a french drainage system; however we can't take the drainage system from the backyard through the side/front yard without causing harm to our neighbor and causing her yard to flood or running into her drainage system. She has no idea exactly what kind of drainage she has and doesn't want to risk damage or flooding (I don't blame her). We also happen to live in an older neighborhood that has older water drains and those of us who have had to replace those drains have no clue where the older ones are?.?.
Is there a way to construct a french drain system and use it to divert water to an area where we could have a VERY SMALL pond of sorts?? I'm assuming the pond or end drainage point would need to be very deep to contain the water, but I'm not certain what else there is to do to help with our backyard 'sludge' and basement flooding. We are seeing the beginnings of cracking in the foundation wall and don't want the problem to get any worse, we also don't want to fix the foundation only to have it start cracking again...we want to ensure the flooding stops now, the cracking foundation is fixed so current problems don't get worse.
Any solutions or advice for my problem would be greatly appreciated. We don't want to hire anyone, and my husband is handy enough and smart enough to follow instruction with regards to digging trenches and installing drains....I just want to make certain anything we might do would work before we do it.
Thanks in advanced to anyone with any helpful suggestions....
I have attached pictures of the most recent flooding to show where most of the water collects and hopefully give a visual as to the sloping from our backyard neighbors; these pictures were taken after my husband and I tried a "one day" fix to quickly divert water from sitting directly next to the foundation of the house.
We have the piping to construct a french drainage system; however we can't take the drainage system from the backyard through the side/front yard without causing harm to our neighbor and causing her yard to flood or running into her drainage system. She has no idea exactly what kind of drainage she has and doesn't want to risk damage or flooding (I don't blame her). We also happen to live in an older neighborhood that has older water drains and those of us who have had to replace those drains have no clue where the older ones are?.?.
Is there a way to construct a french drain system and use it to divert water to an area where we could have a VERY SMALL pond of sorts?? I'm assuming the pond or end drainage point would need to be very deep to contain the water, but I'm not certain what else there is to do to help with our backyard 'sludge' and basement flooding. We are seeing the beginnings of cracking in the foundation wall and don't want the problem to get any worse, we also don't want to fix the foundation only to have it start cracking again...we want to ensure the flooding stops now, the cracking foundation is fixed so current problems don't get worse.
Any solutions or advice for my problem would be greatly appreciated. We don't want to hire anyone, and my husband is handy enough and smart enough to follow instruction with regards to digging trenches and installing drains....I just want to make certain anything we might do would work before we do it.
Thanks in advanced to anyone with any helpful suggestions....