My husband just called me at work to say that there was about an inch of water over the entire basement floor of our house . This is new ( I was down there last night and no problem then). We have had about 4 days of pretty much continous rain (rare in this area). The water doesn’t look dirty or smell bad. We live in a medium sized Canadian city .We have had two previous episodes in really cold spells of frozen pipes causing problems, but aside from the rain the weather hasn’t been a problem.
How do we handle this, and who do we call for help? Any advice would be appreciated.
I would guess that it came up from any floor drains in the area, if you don’t normally get a lot of rain, the storm sewers may not be able to handle the increased amount thus backing up into peoples houses. What to do, first I would probably ask neighbors if it happened to any of them. Second I would call your city water works. If there’s a blockage in the sewer pipe they should come and clean it out. Since it doesn’t smell I would guess that it is backed up from the sewer system and not the sanitary system. Also don’t forget to check the obvious, is anything in the basement leaking??
One last thing, if it is indeed coming up from a floor drain, go to a hardware store and get a lenght of pvc (3 or 4 feet will probably do) that fits tightly into the floor drain. The next time it rains heavily stick the PVC pipe into the drain and the water will just fill the tube instead of the basement.
It sounds like either standing water next to the house is finding its way in or the local water table has risen so much that the foundation drains outside can’t carry it away. Water is leaking in through some crack or opening in the wall that it normally doesn’t reach.
Something like this happened to my friends’ place (but not nearly as drastic).
Have a look inside for a leaking pipe just in case. (You may get lucky.)
Look round the outside of the house for standing water against the foundation wall. Look to see whether it’s up against any windows or openings where pipes, etc, pass through the wall. Look also at the same places on the inside of the wall.
My friends eventually rented equipment and dug down next to their cracked and leaking basement wall and sealed it again from the outside. Unfortunately, that’s the only way to really take care of this, barring rebuilding the wall.
(On seeing the other post)
What Joey P said. Yes, check for floor-drain stoppage and/or backage as well. Fixing that could be a lot cheaper than fixing a leaky wall.
How close do your downspouts terminate to the exterior wall? If they are dumping the roof load right next to the foundation, that’s not good. Spend $20 on aluminum or plastic piping to extend discharges 10’ or so from the walls.
Oh, and do you have a sump pump, if you do make sure it’s working (pull the float up and it should start running) if, it’s not running the drain tile might be flooding the basement.
Thanks for all the advice - you guys are great.
So my husband trupa was able to get a submersible pump last night and put it in the site where the water was welling up from (sewer clean-out access hole in the guest bedroom in the basement). The contractors who come out here said they thought the rate of water coming in was too high for seepage , so we have put in a call for the city water folks (but of course they came by when I was putting trusquirt to bed and trupa was in the basement and didn’t hear the doorbell ring :smack: , so we will have to put in another call to them today).
We are having a moving company empty out our basement at the moment. Trusquirt is a bit traumatized by all the strange people tromping through the house, but aside from extra cuddles for comfort, I figure he’ll just have to learn and grow from this experience.
We will get a basement company to see what can be done to prevent this happening in future. They will probably recommend a sump pump. Trupa is grumbly because we will probably only need it once every ten years or so (and because he hurt his big toe while dealing with this stuff 
).