Sometimes it pays to be paranoid...

Recently Southeast Minnesota received a lot of rain. A lot. In about 24 hours our part of town received 11.5"...no kidding. We noticed that some home owners down the street put sheets of plywood over their basement egress window openings.

How did our basement fare with the two sizable basement egress windows in the front?

In our original posting on our basement remodel, we didn't mention everything that happened during construction. So now for the rest of the story...

Paul is a bit of a worrier. Or you could say he has a heightened sense of concern. One night during the construction he had a dream that his neighbors burned him in effigy (really) over poor construction of the egress windows (in the dream). When he woke up, he began to think about water displacement...

To illustrate his thoughts, look at the following pictures and captions...

An exterior view of a Bilco ScapeWEL...
...note that the rain would just pour in...

There is an optional Bilco clear cover...
...which we chose...
...but note that any water displaced will drop immediately over the sides...
...so is that still a problem?...yes...

Because when installing the ScapeWEL...
...you have to dig a large(r) opening...
...as with putting in any egress...
...but...
...Bilco has some very specific instructions regarding backfill...

From the ScapeWEL installation manual:

STEP 6 Backfilling:
If sandy soil exists, line the opening with a permanent barrier (such as house wrap) to restrict sand from washing into rock. FAILURE TO PROPERLY BACKFILL WILL VOID WARRANTY

OUTSIDE of Well: Backfill evenly by hand on all sides as the hole is filled in; Do not do one side at a time. Always use 3/4” clean free-draining rock or A6 stone completely around the well at least 12” in width to isolate the well from the earth. Fill area to within 4” of top step panel. This will keep window well movement to a minimum during cold weather freeze/thaw conditions and settling soil. Do not use expansive soils, frozen soils, material that has debris, or organic material.

What this all meant was that any water displaced over the Bilco covers we bought would just drop over the side onto the gravel and again go right into the bottom of the egress opening. If we were ever to get 6" or more of rain in a short period of time, that could cause an accumulation in our window well. Our 1960 house does not have exterior drain tile. So what to do?

Paul went to the general contractor and told him about his dream and that we had to change our design...to use those fugly stainless steel corrugated window wells (since you don't have to backfill them with gravel...and thus the displaced water would not be a problem). We would eat the cost of the already purchased Bilco materials to prevent a future catastrophe. The general contractor took it in stride (and ignored the opportunity to play Sigmund Freud to Paul's dreams). He said let's first look at all the options. So we took to thinking and came up with a plan.

What we ended up doing is laying 6" under the ground rubber roofing material (for flat roofs) over the ground at a slope away from the house. The roofing material was cut around the Bilco ScapeWELs so that any water displaced over the sides would hit the ground (6") of it, saturate it quite quickly and cause any more to wash off the ground (at a slope) away from the house. Further more, we also lined the vertical sides of between the backfill and the earth to prevent water from seeping in along the sides.

Until this year we had no problems.

When the 11.5" of rain came this year...we still had no problems.

Sometimes it pays to be paranoid.