So, our neighborhood floods. We weren’t particularly surprised to find that out since a. we live in Houston and b. our sewer systems are older. We knew when we moved into the area that Nottingham was slated for new sewer systems – in 2008. That sounded good when we were moving here. That is until the street in front of our house has proceeded to trap us in our home 4 times in less than a year from flooding. The worst was yesterday. I wish I knew how much rain we had between 8:30 and 9:30, but I noted that the water in the backyard was creeping precariously close to the house. We also started getting water in our dining room from a faulty gutter.
With Joelle watching Dora, I ran outside to start dumping buckets of water from our backyard to the driveway. The water was up to the hardiplank line on the house! I had three buckets and the broom going at full speed. I didn’t seem to be making any improvements. I remembered a physics lesson and tried to rig the hose to start moving water out of the backyard (kinda like the fish vacuum concept). That didn’t work. I knew I didn’t understand physics.
While I was in the front dumping a bucket, a car stalled in front of our house trying to go through knee high water. My neighbors across the street and I, pushed the car out of the street to a driveway. I mentioned how high the water was in our backyard, so Jim came back to see if he could clear our french drains. They were blocked, but they also wouldn’t drain because they drain into the street in front – which was, um, blocked with water.
We’re left with not a lot of options… we may try to add gutters to the back of the house to direct water away from the backyard to the side yard, but I’m not sure how effective that will be. It’s really just a waiting game until they can fix our sewers. I did send a letter to our council woman to see if this could be expedited, but I’m not too optimistic. I sent her pictures of the swollen street…
The picture set is here.
July 27, 2006 at 9:31 am
I saw your pics yesterday… Very impressive flood, but good photos!… Didn’t know of the tragedy going on inside the house. It reminded me of vague child memories. I guess, as I child, I’ve also seen my mom sweeping water out. Floods are NOT fun.
July 27, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Thankfully we have flood insurance! This side of town is fairly safe from floods and we’re no where near the 100 or even 500 year flood plain! So, we kind of questioned buying it. Gulp.
July 27, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Yikes! Definitely keep that flood insurance. If you guys get a hurricane in the next couple of years, it could be trouble.
July 27, 2006 at 11:33 pm
One summer when I was housesitting for a month in River Oaks it started to flood in the middle of the night. Fortunately I had two friends crashing with me for a few days. We were out there in our jammies literally pushing our cars and the homeowners’ cars up onto the lawn. We had 4 cars on the lawn, I think. It was insane. Also, during Alison my volvo had a few inches of water INSIDE it, with me bailing it out with a Big Gulp cup. I was actually able to drive it up the driveway. Volvos can withstand anything.
Wow Petie you made me write a long response!
July 28, 2006 at 7:38 am
Thanks for the “long” comment, Meg! 🙂 It’s good to know that even good ‘ole River Oaks isn’t immune to the Houston flooded street syndrome.
I still can’t believe that Volvo had such a sad demise…
August 2, 2006 at 2:32 pm
physics concept = siphoning
Siphoning won’t work all that well in that sort of situation though. It would be dependent on the level of water in your backyard being quite a bit higher than in front.
For that matter, the same is true of using the buckets to move the water. If the French drain isn’t working because of the water level in the front, transfering the water by bucket won’t do any good, unfortunately.
And I vouch for the Volvos! Especially those old 240s.
August 2, 2006 at 2:38 pm
Well the water might have been higher in the front, but the water next to the house in the back was higher than that on the driveway (no standing water) – we’d rather have that water go down the driveway to our front yard than into our house.
Having said that, the siphoning still wouldn’t work because that part of the backyard is in a very subtle bowl. The buckets still got the water away from the house, though.
August 3, 2006 at 7:55 am
I’m not sure I follow, but it sounds like there was a (relatively high) pool of water in the back that wouldn’t have drained otherwise (even if the sewer system was working. That makes sense to me then.
I’m not sure why siphoning wouldn’t have worked though (besides it just being really hard to siphon things correctly under pressure).
August 3, 2006 at 8:19 am
Actually, my dad told me that it theoretically should have worked. However, it’s hard to get it started. It was an extremely long hose and the entire length of the hose needed to be filled with water before it would start operating correctly. He said you often have to suck on one end as you would a straw… something I’m not willing to do! (dirty flood water, no thanks!)
August 3, 2006 at 1:09 pm
It would be a fun thing to show Joelle in the confines of the kitchen, and a cheap way to get gasoline, but it’s not real fun in other situations. As your dad said, it’s hard to get out any bubbles from the hose (though you might be able to do it without sucking if the pool of water in the back were deep enough). I would say the harder part than filling the hose with water initially would be moving the hose all the way from the front to the back without allowing any air to get in. That would require a very good seal.
Another alternative, which might have been what your dad was referring to would be to run the hose first and then suck on one end hoping to get the water to start flowing. Depending on how high the hose got, that might take quite a bit of sucking though.
I wonder how high a human mouth can suck water up a vertical length of hose. Do you think someone could manage more than a foot?