The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves. - Bill Mollison
Here in the Ohio River Valley, our water problems tend to be of the too much variety rather than too little. Not only does the Ohio River like to get out of its banks from time to time, but the city of Louisville seems expressly designed to foment flash floods.
That's all beyond my control but I also have a flooding problem a little closer to home. Whoever designed my house was either an idiot or incredibly negligent, the whole property slopes downhill towards the driveway, which slopes the opposite direction down to the basement door. Guess where all the runoff seems to end up? If you guessed the basement, congratulations, you just won a burned out shopvac! Delivery not included.
Last year I ditched the yard and it seemed to help, at least until it got clogged with debris and silted up. That was good enough for government work but now it's probably time for a more permanent solution. Been trying to think of how to engineer the yard so that the basement stays dry, but when I ask the oracle google it mostly talks about rainwater capture rather than diversion.
Much of what I could find was more city scale solutions than something for a half acre but it led me down several nice rabbit holes. Ended up in permacultureland which is where the quote at the beginning comes from, didn't realize permaculture was anarchist.
Still didn't find the solution I was looking for but it did give me some ideas for the yard more generally. Guess that just leaves asking the hive. What does flood control look like where you live? What do people do to minimize/utilize runoff and flooding? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Photos are from the last time the Ohio River got good and uppity, back in February 2018.
What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
We’ve got a hill behind our house. When the snow melts, the water all heads our way. Did some berm-type landscaping three years ago and have two sump pumps in the basement but we’ve had unusually heavy snowfall this winter so I'm not at all sure we’ll have a dry basement this spring.
Ha, I was wondering if anyone would take that and run with it 🤣 Kinda surprised @jacobtothe didn't...
Luckily we don't get that kind of snow but that still doesn't sound like much fun either. So does the snowmelt come at you in one big rush or more of a steady buildup of water? With the lay of the land I'm afraid berms wouldn't be very practical here but I will keep that in mind.
Thanks for dropping by!
It really depends on how fast the warmup is. But when we’ve had trouble in the past, the crisis unfolds over a couple of days.
Unrelated to the snow, we recently had the basement laundry room’s drain roto rootered 75' out to the city connection so that should help with spring runoff.
House flooding is a bitch. I was able to get a bead on it by re-grading the yard around the house, improving the gutters, and painting sealant on the basement cinder blocks. I have a mostly flat yard, however, so I wasn't faced with a torrent of water coming down a hill at me.
Would a top end french drain and a sump pump that pumped the water out to the other side the yard help?
I'm a bit jealous :) French drain would definitely help, although I have my doubts about the sump pump making a difference. Been considering (and dreading) a French drain for a while, was hoping someone could save me from having to put one in. Did recently come across the 'dry creek' idea which seems to be a French drain sans pipe, I'm a bit tempted to try it.
With the way the land lays it seems like it wouldn't take much to redirect it and not have to do all that digging. Then again, all my projects seem easy until I get started and then they never end up being that way.
Thanks for dropping by! (Sorry for the late reply, I kind of wandered away from hive for a few days)
Hahaha! Yeah, that's the story of my life, too. "Sure, I can do that!" ... a few days later... "wth did I start?"
It's a shame you couldn't build a moat. Not only would it redirect the water, it'd be really cool.
Flood control here isn't usually an issue. As a draftsman, I know the goal is to design the structure and landscape to guide water away from the foundation. Some folks who live right next to smaller rivers and creeks have to sandbag during flood season. That's about it.
I remember when I was growing up in Minnesota, it seemed like the red River flooded every Spring. Rivers in the midwest tend to have flood plains. This is part pf why it's such good agriculture land. This risk needs to be part of any construction plan. But some people seem to rely on taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance instead of analyzing the geography and planning for disaster.
[/my2¢]
Yeah, if this house was built today it wouldn't pass code inspection because of that. This house was built back in 1938, right after the worst flood this city has ever seen (1937 flood, when 70% of the city had been underwater. I suspect they were in a hurry to throw housing up and just weren't paying attention to minor details such as that.
Where I grew up it was more ditching to keep everything from washing away than sandbags and the like, people mostly lived on the ridges because the bottomland was the only decent spots to grow crops. My hometown was where the three forks of the Kentucky River came together so it flooded much like your Red River (we have one too).
Honestly I suspect that it's more people don't think than relying on flood insurance, there'd be a lot better uptake rates on that if that were the case. I was reading last week about people buying houses in Arizona that have no access to water at all.
Berms and ditches, French drains and culverts. My experience suggests to avoid subsurface development because it's more complex and expensive to install and maintain, while also being less able to be maintained, as well as less likely, because out of sight out of mind.
Perhaps ditching the yard in another sense is potentially more rewarding, as in utilize the yard for something besides mowing practice and lawnmower testing, that can divert or capture floodwaters better than a field of grass.
Without familiarity with your place, desires, or circumstances, it's difficult to be more specific. Having been flooded I am deeply empathetic.
Those are great pictures. The choice of monochrome really emphasizes the textural qualities of the water, contrasting it with the skeletal forms of the trash receptacle and the benches that proclaim the ability of water to smother and bury everything. The trees rise straight out of liquid, as if they were severed from the Earth. Their branches seem to blend with the structure of the bridge, well placed at just the right height. The linear element of the bridge mirrors the level waters, giving the whole scene a sense of ordination, beyond the understanding and control of mere mortals. As above, so below. The last pic is haunting.
Thanks!
Seems we've had similar experiences with the subsurface stuff, I want nothing to do with it if I can help it. My hope is to find something that is fairly minimal and natural while still being effective. So far I'm leaning towards a dry creek and a rain garden but I was curious to see how others dealt with this sort of thing.
Ditching the yard is exactly what we're working towards :) Each year there's less and less grass but the house sits partway down a hill so runoff from the neighbors will still be a problem even once the grass is gone.
No sweat, I wasn't expecting specifics, for similar reasons. Just hoping to learn something and maybe spark ideas.
Thank you. It was rather surreal being down there, a reminder of how subject to conditions our existence really is.
Thanks for dropping by!
Would you deliver it to me if it wasn't burned out?
Of course! Might take a minute but you'd eventually get it.
So I'm guessing a shopvac wasn't a part of your traveliving kit?
Until right now I never considered how convenient a shop vac would be for a carry-on. Durable wheels, tow strap, genius.
Oh, this is a tragedy, something pretty bad or difficult to believe, but it’s very helpful to have these files in images. It shows what happened and it could be useful even to urban planning or something like that.
Thankfully it's not as bad as it looks, the city had a really bad flood back in 1937 and when they rebuilt afterwards they made it so there wasn't anything too close to the river that could be harmed by another flood. The area where I took these is mostly roads and parks, the only restaurant down there is on stilts so it didn't actually flood. It's still rather surreal to see all that underwater though.
Thanks for dropping by!
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