Window Well

So you may recall a brief rant in our last posting about our basement flooding (see here). And if you are true followers of ours, you may recall that this was not the first time this has happened (see here and here). The first flood was a fluke involving a mouse (may he rot) and a ice maker line. The second two both were related to a poorly designed window well. The second flood was caused by rain and the third was a sprinkler system issue, but that is irrelevant because the window well and yard should NOT be designed to channel the water into the guest room. So the concern was that this was going to happen again the next time we get a significant rain (and again and again). This had to be fixed. The right answer, tear out the patio and all the grass in the backyard and re-grade the entire area to move water away from the house after digging out the first 10 feet of dirt around the house to eliminate the under ground water channels. Uhm No. The next best answer was to rebuild the current window well to handle the water. Better. So the problem is not that water comes in over the top, it is that it flows in from the sides of the well from all sorts of places in the yard. And the well can’t absorb it fast enough before it fills it and flows through the window. So we dug out all the dirt. This was not easy. It was all rock at first and there is no room to dig. You have to take small scoop after small scoop and put it into a bucket to haul out. This is why we put Caden down there...he fit better. But we also had TONS of help from the Battista's and Alex and Nick. It took about 50 buckets full, but we got it emptied. We then placed a large sum pit with a pump in the bottom middle and filled it back up with rock. Then managed to get the output pipe tunneled out of the well and sent to the front yard. Done and done. If this doesn’t work and, the basement floods again...uhm, I don’t know...maybe I will make it look like an accident if you get my drift?

Why yes, we did put our kid in a deep hole with nothing but a bucket and shovel!