Afraid That Your Basement Will Flood? Here Is What You Can Do

You’re terrified that you’ll wake up one day, walk down to your basement and see that it’s completely flooded.

You don’t have to worry anymore. You can follow these four steps to make sure that your basement stays dry all year long:

Get It Waterproofed

You don’t want a drop of water ruining your basement? Then, you should call the top basement waterproofing experts in Toronto to see what kind of waterproofing services they can offer you. They can do everything from applying vapour barriers behind your walls to sealing cracks in the foundation to installing emergency plumbing features. With their professional help, you can make your basement water-tight, inside and out.

Get a Back-Up for Your Sump Pump

You have a sump pump already. It’s a great waterproofing tool that will collect water accumulating around your foundation and direct it away from the house. The only problem with sump pumps is that they can create a huge mess when they fail. Sump pumps can stop working when they’re old or broken, but the biggest cause of sump pump failure is a simple power outage — this typically happens during a heavy rainstorm.

That’s why you have to give your sump pump a back-up power source so that it can continue to keep water at bay, even when your home loses electricity. This improvement will guarantee that your sump pump works when you need it the most.

Check Your Drains

One of the best ways to prepare for rainstorms and reduce your chances of flooding is to get a professional to inspect your drains. Clogged, broken and disjointed drains will spell trouble whenever there’s heavy rainfall. Backup could find its way into your basement.

Bad drains are also a problem if the flooding is coming from inside of the house — like a burst pipe, an overflowing toilet or a blown out washing machine hose. In these unfortunate scenarios, you want the water to go down the floor drains. A blocked drain won’t give the water the exit it needs, letting it pool all over the floor.

Inspect Your Washing Machine

A washing machine can cause a lot of water damage in a short amount of time when the supply hose blows out. So, if your laundry room is situated in the basement and you want to limit the risks of floods, you need to inspect the machine’s hose.

Old rubber hoses can burst open or “blow out” and send water spilling all over the floor. If your machine has a plain rubber hose, you should look at better washing machine hose options that come with flooding protections, like steel-braiding and auto-shutoff mechanisms.

After installing your new hose, you’re going to want to give it a test run to see that the connection is tight and that there are no leaks coming through. You don’t want to discover that you installed it wrong after tossing clothes into the wash.

Don’t wait for your fears to come true. Make these changes now so that you never have to see part of your basement underwater.