Long Story, lots of pictures.
A few years ago (about 3.5) I bought a house in what they call the Ottawa Valley. Little did I know there seemed to have been flooding issues in the area. From what I can make out from the city and some neighbours around me, my basement got flooded about 15 or so years ago during a 50-year weather event. The incident was never filled out by the previous owners (that's a no-no here and would likely get me a win in court if I found issues, but I never saw issues so their fix was good I guess).
So back around 3 years ago we had a 30-year rain event. Neighbours told me they saw my sump pump spit out water (I have like a pit in the furnace room with a sump in it). Anyhow after much worrying, not knowing what to do, wonder if I should hit court on the previous owners for an undeclared incident, I just raised the level of the sump and it hasn't gone on since. But I did notice water raise in that pit after every single rain.
Then I met a guy out behind me who happens to be the ex city engineer. So I got the story about the flooding in the area (mainly his road due to design) and how they went to court against the city and won. This led to many people being compensated by the city for each and every water/sewer back-up or basement flood.
The sewer system was what is called a pseudo-sewer system. It combined both grey water (storm water) and sewage.
In another topic here a few years back I got a great schooling on sewer systems, the same problems in the states, how weather events are getting more severe and frequent, failure rates of certain plumbing backwater valves and so forth. A couple of people here shared (PDF's) what their city was doing, planning, and consulting people on. Was a fantastic education on how it all works. But people in these area's didn't sue their city, it appears. Much is on the home owners dime over there.
Anyhow the above is now a true split sewer system.
Over the past couple of years they upgraded streets around me. The pit in my furnace room? It is now home to an ugly spider. I leave it there since it's cob web lets me know if the water raised or not. Water hasn't moved even after we got another 30-year event 2 years ago. But they still continued with the work as promised. This year was my street.
Installed in each home:
1. New water line (3/4 inch) with ball/gate valve shut off.
2. Mainline backwater valve, similar to this, »
www.backwatervalve.com/products/···lve.html3. The clean-outs and inspection ports.
4. French drain (weeping tile) hook-ups.
5. Backwater valves on all basement floor drains, and Backwater valves on all appliances like laundry room sinks etc.
They were supposed to do my basement shower but didn't. They said they will do it if I request it but they prefer not to break the tile there. They stated the MainLine one should be good enough. I'm undecided. Have this week to decide. What would you do?
6. Garages got upgraded with big grill-type floor drains
Those two cement sewers you see in the pic's... 6 men can stand in one easy. Retention fields are built into the bedrock. The main retention field sewer pipe can fit a train engine. I don't have pic's of those unfortunately. It's supposed to be the biggest one in Canada I think. They went all out.
Cost Millions. Out of my own pocket? Zero. Wonder if my property tax will go up now?
My floor was just re-cemented over this past Friday and they just started patching the wall. I haven't had a chance to check it all out yet to make sure things are perfect. I'll do that tomorrow. I may have questions and pics to post here on that since any fix needs to be addressed before they take off which is likely next week. So plumbing type people expect some questions.
Pics:
They dig down to virgin clay (including to the house) A pic above shows 3 levels of nice clay each pipe lays on. Think they told me this is 14-feet down.
Lay a bed of sand and compact that
Lay 3 pipes on road and to the houses (water, sanitary, storm)
come in my house and drink
Replace sewer & manholes
lay more sand then compact it
refill
repave peoples driveways
come in my house and drink
repave streets
Lay topsoil
re-sod
and whatever else.
Finally, a few years back a couple of people asked me to post this. I said I would. Promise kept.
