This weekend we received quite a bit of rain, in fact there is some rather serious flooding in parts of Minnesota as a result of the storms. We knew the storms were coming, and we knew we were vulnerable to flooding without gutters and our egresses in mid construction. Going into the weekend I made sure we had operable drains running from our egressed window areaways and tried to divert as much water from the roof away from the areaways as possible, but I couldn't help but be nervous.
I was out of town over the weekend when the storm hit, but my thoughts were with the house and how our drainage was holding up. We'd had some problems in the past with large downpours filling in the window wells and having water spill over the sills into the basement. Now that we have drywall on the walls we can't afford to have that happen again. There were some tense moments Saturday night as I sat waiting to hear the outcome, unable to do anything about the situation myself but hope I'd done enough to prepare on Friday.
As it turns out some last minute fixes by Peter to make sure our drain inlets stayed submerged and open (they were tending to float as they weren't set into the gravel yet due to the egress construction in progress) managed to keep our water infiltration to a minimum. We did have some water seeping in around the foundation in a few areas but we have fans blowing in the basement to dry that up as quickly as possible. Taking these steps to avoid water infiltration and then dry it as quickly as possible will have long term benefits in mold reduction and prevention, key aspects of building a green house that will last and maintain a healthy living environment.
Tomorrow, Tuesday Aug 21st the gutters are being installed and all our worries with water will be over.