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How To Keep Water Out of Your Garage

garage flooded small

You’ve just closed on your new home: a stunning 5 bedroom 3 bathroom Victorian with a three car garage, and you got it for an unbelievable price.

It was a steal! (What were the sellers thinking?) You smile in self-satisfaction as you lay down for your first night’s sleep in your new home, as the rain gently falls outside.

The next morning you find yourself knee deep in water in your new three car garage, and your smile seems to have transformed into a hideous scowl.

It suddenly dawns on you why the sellers were so eager to dump the property like a hot potato: the garage gets flooded every time it rains!

Can You Stop Water from Entering the House After a Rain?

Every time it rains, poor people all around the country find themselves in similar situations with water infiltrating their garages. It can seem a daunting problem to approach. After all, how does one fight the forces of nature?

Rest assured, there are ways to fix the problem of water entering your garage.

And here are a few:

1. Trench Drain (NDS Water Grate System)

Though not easy or cheap — this is one of the most effective ways to keep water out of your garage.

This solution involves creating a trench for rainwater to fall into. You can see such a system in action in our video titled “How Do I Keep Water Out of My Garage Video” which we filmed recently for a crawl space encapsulation job that we did here in Knoxville, TN.

This house was unique in that it was basically constructed in a small valley! Well, not really a valley but the home was at the bottom of a very steep hill and whenever it rained hundreds of gallons of water would collect at the bottom and run into the garage and home.

This issue was alleviated by installing a trench drain system. Watch the video to see what we mean.

Do It Yourself Supplies for Installing a Trench Drain System

If you’d like to purchase the supplies for installing such a trench drain system, click here to visit the product page.

2. Grading beside the drive way

If your driveway is below the level of the surrounding ground rainwater will run off onto the driveway making it more likely the water will flow back to your garage, and underneath the garage door.

Grading is not a super difficult solution to implement. Simply dig around the driveway to lower the level to below the driveway, and then fill in the earth with coarse grading. You can even find different varieties of grading stones with different colors and textures if you’re concerned about outward appearances.

There are many decorative styles of grading available on the market these days. You can keep your garage dry, and still be in style.

3. Door and floor seal

This is a great way to block water from entering your garage. A special seal is installed under your garage door which makes it impossible for water to creep under the door and into your garage.

These products can be purchased online or self installed, and the mechanism is very simple. It basically makes use of gravity.

Since the seal is designed in a triangle shape, it’s impossible for small amounts of water to travel up the slope and penetrate the garage.

4. Guttering

A smart guttering system is also a great way to reduce the chance that water enters your garage.

Picture this: its raining hard, and much of the water from your roof simply runs right off and onto your driveway, where it then flows back into your garage door.

We cannot prevent rain water from falling. But what if you could guide the roof water far away from your garage?

The good news is you can. The solution is to install guttering all around the roof in such a way as to guide the water away from the garage so that it falls elsewhere. You can use long gutters so that all the water that would normally fall onto the garage are re-routed toward the back of the house where it falls harmlessly into your yard! I

t’s not a complete solution if you get large amounts of rain, but it certainly goes a long way toward reducing the amount of moisture around your garage door.

Helping Out Where We Can!

Of course we’re not in the garage business but we know the importance of keeping the home dry so we decided to put this information together for you anyway. If you’re interested in the trench drain solution mentioned above, again you can find that product by clicking on this link. We don’t sell this product ourselves but we have worked with it in the past and know it to be a good product.

Thanks for stopping by and reading our blog, and stay tuned for more content geared toward keeping your home dry, coming soon!

Contact Crawl Space Ninja to Waterproof Your Basement or Foundation

Our team of waterproofing specialists are ready to help you with your moisture intrusion. Give us a call at (865) 659-0390 or find your local Crawl Space Ninja experts. Speak to one of our waterproofing advisors for your free quote to get started today.

About Michael Church

Michael Church has been involved with indoor air quality since 2005 and feels the unhealthy crawl space is one of the major problems causing poor indoor air quality.

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