It's been raining for the last three days. I think we're up to at least 6 inches total for my town. The ground is saturated and flooding is happening in low-lying areas.

We have a stairwell that goes down to a door into the basement. There's a drain at the bottom that empties into drain tile that empties into the sump pump.

We've had problems for years with the drain cover getting clogged with leaves or other tree debris. I tried an atrium drain cover but even that can get plugged with just a small handful of debris, as happened the last two days despite the fact that I swept everything clean just before the rain started. Doesn't matter how much I clean because the rain just washes new seeds and tree buds down and the drain clogs. The stairwell fills with just enough water to seep in under the door. Not a disaster, but a damn nuisance.

How little it takes to plug a raised atrium drain cover that's about 4" tall.



Decided to look around on the internet for ideas. Someone came up with this solution using interlocking tiles designed to allow for drainage. I can't believe I didn't think of it before.

I haven't cut the tiles to fit yet, but here's the concept. The drain is roughly centered in the stairwell.



I'm hoping that it will function as very large drain cover (13 square feet or so). Even with a lot of junk falling on the tile, I think there will be sufficient surface area for the water to drain thru. Certainly a lot more than either of the drain covers I've tried in the past.

Com Ed vault floods at Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2...weather-lower-wacker

The Chicago river overflowed the retaining wall at the River City condos not far from us and flooded the basement garage... It happened about 10 years ago and the management didn't raise the wall!

It's only the 19th of May, and this is already the wettest May on record.

quote:

With nearly two weeks remaining in the month, Chicago broke the record Tuesday for the wettest May in history thanks to a series of heavy rainfall events.

According to data from the National Weather Service, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport has reported 8.3 inches of rain this month, making this the wettest May since record keeping began in the 1950s.

The all-time record hasn’t exactly stood for very long. According to NBC Storm Team 5, the record was set in 2019, with 8.25 inches of rain falling during the month.

Records are made to be broken, but three years in a row? That's exactly what has happened as we have set then exceeded new rainfall totals for each month of May over the past three years. We still have almost two weeks to go, so we will add to this new record. @nbcchicago pic.twitter.com/L0bIGo5ymC

— Andy Avalos (@AndyAvalosNBC5) May 19, 2020
May 2018 was another record-setting month, with 8.21 inches of rain, meaning this marks the third consecutive year that the monthly rain record has been broken.

auto-start video:

https://www.nbcchicago.com/wea...of-all-time/2274463/

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:



I'm hoping that it will function as very large drain cover (13 square feet or so). Even with a lot of junk falling on the tile, I think there will be sufficient surface area for the water to drain thru. Certainly a lot more than either of the drain covers I've tried in the past.

This is a great idea.

We have a drain in our driveway, with a 20” x 20” square drywell and pipe that goes to the sewer system (why doesn’t it go directly to the street instead of going all the way around the house? Someone in the 1920s thought this was a great idea). It used to have a metal plate with holes drilled in it, over it, but when it rained heavily a vacuum would form and no water would go down, ending up with water in a big pool against our house. Bad news. I used to just prop up one edge so that water could go down, but debris would get in there, too.

A few years ago I had a grate made for it, like a city sewer grate at the end of the block? But the spacing meant that all sorts of tree debris could go down through it, so I wired some chicken wire over the top. Not bad.

Just had my asphalt driveway repaved, and the paver put a piece of fiberglass cloth under the grate (like construction workers do on the sewer grates), and that’s working well.

Now I just need to clean out the drywell...later. There’s a magic moment of “it’s just some mud” between “full of water” and “dried hard as a brick” which is the time to dig out the crud!