Holding back a 'wall of water nine feet high'
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Building codes were simpler when we started to build our house on Second Street in Straffordville.
Actually there was no real street at the time, just the name on a plan of the village. Ours was the first lot to be occupied. Where the roadway would be was covered with grass, thistles, wild berry bushes.
I started to dig the hole for the foundation with a shovel, but soon realized that was foolish and hired Blake Wolfe to bring his bulldozer. Frank Volkaert drove the machine.
When I told Blake how deep to dig, he said nobody digs that deep. Go down five feet and fill around the basement. I had no thought of possible flooding at that time. How could water not drain naturally down through the pure sand that gave the little community the name Sandytown?
In a couple of years I realized I'd been lucky that I took Blake's advice. When I scraped enough cash together to add an entryway to the house I dug a couple of feet deeper to gain headroom in the new part of the basement. The next spring there was two or three inches of water over that floor.
Since I'd seen no reason to parge and waterproof the outside of the foundation, water was able to percolate through the concrete blocks into the house.
In those days a frequent ad on TV showed an agitated home owner like myself yelling, "Get that backhoe over here!"
Another voice said, "Not so fast! Use Sta-dri on the inside. Holds back a wall of water nine feet high!"
It was true, at least for seven feet, as deep as my wall goes.
Our basement windows are protected by concrete wells and Sta-dri was of no use when a downpour filled them and tried to do the same to the basement, but by and large the main floods have been the result of a faulty fill valve on a washing machine, or forgetting to shut off the faucet to the kitchen sink. Unlike a wash basin those stainless steel jobs have no overflow protection.
Fast forward to that deluge about a month ago. Houses all over the village had water in the basements. That happened in minutes!
The water coming from the eaves trough across the north side of the house didn't have time to filter down the extra few feet to the water table. Some of it penetrated the block wall at the corner of the basement and soaked the rugs in the rec room. Sta-dri, like humans apparently, loses its resistance with age.
Son David and I brainstormed the situation. David suggested sinking a plastic catch basin into the sand under the downspout and draining the water off through a Big-O to lower ground. We would dig in a length of sleeved perforated Big-O along the wall just below the surface in hopes it would provide an escape route to the lower ground during another deluge.
The project is almost complete. We need some earth to raise the backfill to the datum line above the drain. That we hope will direct the surface water away from the wall.
I enquired at the Vienna building centre about Sta-dri. Is it still on the market? No one had heard of it. Hydraulic cement, maybe? Nope. It would seal the wall, but it wouldn't pass muster for matching the decor in the rec room.
In Tillsonburg I found a product, WaterTite, that should serve to repair the paint job in the rec room. It is a latex. The older product was a mineral that was mixed with water. This product resists water to 20 p.s.i. of water pressure. That's not as thrilling as "a wall of water nine feet high" but I hope it means somewhat the same thing.
In many parts of the planet neither Sta-dri nor WaterTight is of any help as homes are swept away by roiling rivers. We are fortunate in comparison.