Wednesday, June 12, 2013

neighbor needs to have drain outside of the basement front door repaired or replaced

See this message from a Bloomingdale household:
         
     I`m looking for anyone with experience repairing/replacing the city drain outside the front door basements in Bloomingdale. Ours seems to have finally given up, and after a snake, we`re running into dirt and roots at four feet down just after the pipe makes a 90 degree turn toward the street.

     The downspout from the roof drains into it, and it`s never been a problem before, but now with the rapid volumes of rain we get from time to time, it just starting pooling up in the area in front of the front basement door, just waiting to overcome the threshold and come into the basement.
                                   
     I would be curious if anyone has diverted their downspout to their front yards, burying some drain in there, or if you have to bite the bullet and have someone crack up all the cement, and repair the city drain pipe (the portion on our property).


5 comments:

Alison Williams said...

Unfortunately, I'm having the same problem. And it just started. This hasn't been an issue for us before, but now we're getting major backups. I actually wonder if the work the city did to (ostensibly) improve the drainage in Bloomingdale removed some of water take-away capacity. It seems very suspicious that we wouldn't have any previous drainage issues and now, a few weeks after pipe work directly in front of our house, we're experiencing backups for the first time.

Any thoughts from readers would be most helpful!

Kerry said...

Fry Plumbing has some sort of tool that makes a quick fix of this. 202-543-4885. It looks kinda midevil but it works. They were out with a similar issue at my home and it's not given me trouble since - that's about 4 years ago now.

aidan said...

I am on Flagler and I am having t he same issue. It started two Sundays ago with the heavy rains. I have had the drain snaked but .... So, I am now planning to dig down and replace the trap.

Unknown said...

You have to wonder how the huge construction a few blocks north at Catholic University and a new impermeable parking lot built at the Franciscan Monastery are going to increase the flooding.
Urban Forestry approves tree removal in Brookland, including many mature trees that reduce the storm water runoff. So the stupidity of the DC govt. is the problem.
So imagine when thousands of new toilets, sinks, dish and clothes washers come on line at CUA and 901 Monroe. The irresponsible zoning decisions just keep on going. The whole tunnel thing is to keep this march of destructive super-urbanizaton on track. Just allow them to take McMillan and you can add those thousands of toilets and sinks.
The garbage was filling the storm drains, because DC Water had never done a proper job keeping them clear. They announced after the major flooding that they would clean out the garbage, wow, actually do their job! But if you look at the storm sewers on Rhode Island Ave, they are all full of cans, bottles and garbage. This city government never cared about the flooding until recently, never provided a proper system of parks. So you have to do it, YOU HAVE TO SAVE MCMILLAN, create a healthy system of trails, woods, hiking and a Glen Echo arts/performance park for our families at McMillan, YOU HAVE TO DO IT! DC Govt. doesn't care about your quality of life, too busy destroying it!

ted said...

If you do have to (or want to) break up the concrete, installing pervious pavers would help with your drainage issues.

The District provides (or used to provide) a subsidy of up to $1200 to cover the cost of pervious pavers (which also reduce storm runoff into our rivers).

Check out this website - http://green.dc.gov/service/riversmart-homes-overview