Interior drain tile system prevents basement flooding during "100-year" rainstorm

The only house on the block that did­n’t flood dur­ing this amaz­ing storm was the San­sone res­i­dence, where U.S. Water­proof­ing had

U.S. Waterproofing’s work kept the San­sone family’s High­land, Indi­ana res­i­dence dry dur­ing one of the worst rain­storms that the area has expe­ri­enced in years. The Sansone’s hired U.S. Water­proof­ing to install a full-house inte­ri­or drain tile sys­tem in Decem­ber of 2002 after their base­ment had flood­ed twice, caus­ing seri­ous dam­age the sec­ond time. Their deci­sion paid off dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber 2006 storm, which dropped more than five inch­es of water on High­land in a sin­gle day.

“They called it the 100-year storm,” explained Mike San­sone. ​“It was one of those days when you just keep wait­ing for it [the rain] to stop, but instead I watched the water go over the curb and then the side­walk, mov­ing clos­er and clos­er to the house. My neigh­bor came over and told me he already had six inch­es of water in his base­ment. He didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t have any.”

In 2002, the San­sones had a full-house inte­ri­or drain tile sys­tem installed, which required U.S Water­proof­ing to cre­ate a trench in the floor around the perime­ter of the house and insert a per­fo­rat­ed drainage pipe and sump pump sys­tem. With this sys­tem, as water ris­es from the ground, it flows through the pipe into the sump pit, which is then pumped harm­less­ly into the back yard. In addi­tion, the sys­tem includ­ed a spe­cial Cove Mold­ing at the base of the walls. Any water seep­ing into the hol­low block wall con­tin­u­ous­ly drains into the mold­ing and then into the drain system.

“We want­ed to make sure that the base­ment nev­er flood­ed again,” said San­sone. ​“We con­sid­ered U.S. Water­proof­ing and one oth­er com­pa­ny, but U.S. Waterproofing’s Base­ment Advi­sor was real­ly per­son­able and put things in terms we could under­stand. He also explained a few dif­fer­ent options. Even though the under­ground drain-tile option we chose was more expen­sive, it seemed more effec­tive than the above-the-floor solu­tion pro­posed by the oth­er company.”

The San­sones made the right choice. The drain tile sys­tem has held up ever since it was installed. In con­trast, at the end of the Sep­tem­ber 2006 rain­storm, San­sone and his neigh­bor walked around the neigh­bor­hood to assess the dam­age. Numer­ous res­i­dents on the block report­ed up to a foot of water in their base­ments. Ruined car­pet­ing and oth­er drenched fur­nish­ings were piled in count­less dri­ve­ways await­ing the trash col­lec­tor. The San­sones didn’t expe­ri­ence any flood­ing at all.

“If we ever decide to sell our house, we have to be open about the past flood­ing sit­u­a­tions,” explained Amy San­sone. ​“U.S. Waterproofing’s trans­fer­able war­ran­ty real­ly sealed the deal for me. By choos­ing U.S. Water­proof­ing I can say, ˜Yes, we expe­ri­enced flood­ing prob­lems twice. Here’s what we did about it. We haven’t had any flood­ing since then. And, here’s a trans­fer­able war­ran­ty on the sys­tem in case you have any prob­lems down the road.’”

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