It’s time for someone to name names. Who in the St Louis area invoked God’s wrath, leading to more than 40 days and 40 nights of rain? Could He be THAT MUCH of a Boston Bruins fan? Did the failure of the City-County merger spoil some vast eternal plan? And why instead of a plague of locusts are we seeing these little hoppy green suckers all over the place? They MUST be falling from the sky because not even rabbits can breed that fast!
As handymen, we at Fix St Louis accept it is not for us to answer questions that stump the most learned members of the clergy. But it is well within our calling to deal with the very worldly issue of how to keep these rains of Biblical proportions from entering and damaging your house.
Sump Pumps
Your home may or may not have one, but a sump pump is an electrically-operated water pump mounted in a lid-covered hole in your basement floor. It collects groundwater that gets underneath the perimeter of your house, and pumps it up and out, either back into your yard or into a sewer pipe.
If you’ve got one, make sure it works. If you’re afraid it may stop working in a power outage, Fix St Louis can install a unit with an alarm, a backup battery, or both. If your house has NOT been prepared for a sump pump — that is, it does not have a hidden below-floor channel around the basement floor perimeter and a hole someplace in the concrete floor for the pump itself — it can still be retrofitted to accommodate a sump pump (though not inexpensively).
Foundation Leaks
If you see water coming into your basement from cracks in your concrete foundation or notice that floors near walls are wet, you should do something about it. Fix St Louis can refer you to the real experts in water entering your house – qualified foundation specialists. When their work is done, Fix St Louis can repair the damage created by BOTH them and the water.
Gutters & Downspouts
Gutters and downspouts are designed to direct all the water that hits your roof into drain pipes or onto ground sloped away from your house. Call Fix St Louis if you see water overflowing your gutters, leaking from beneath a gutter, spewing from the bottoms of downspouts that have become disconnected from drain pipes at their bases, or pooling near your house.
Mind the Gaps
If water is entering your house from gaps around windows and doors, call Fix St Louis to replace the caulk, inside and out, and repair the damage to the inside of your home. We can also fill the gaps between concrete patio floors and the house.
Look, I’m just a humble servant to homeowners, not a prophet. But, I’m still going to predict these rains are not a signal we have reached the end times. So, let’s all just wait it out. But thanks to Fix St Louis, you don’t have to wait it out wet.
Dr Steve
Fix St Louis
314-434-4100