Water—LOTS of it—means trouble down below
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
It began last March over at Woodstone. While Karen and Peter Van Nort were off in sunny Arizona, their house sitter was out walking their dog one day when an acquaintance drove by in a Glen Arbor Outdoor truck. He mentioned that he was checking their clients’ vacant homes as a precaution and asked if she had checked the Van Nort’s basement.
“Why?” she asked.
As Bob Ihme, president of Glen Arbor Outdoor, later explained, “The ground is frozen. When the snow starts to melt, and you have a lot of snow, the ground is saturated at a higher level than typically if the ground weren’t frozen.”
The Van Nort’s basement was a mess. They called in a restoration company that pumped out 5,000 gallons of water on that first day. “There was so much pressure coming up under the house,” Karen recalls, “that the concrete floor had begun to move. The president of the company stayed at our house 14 hours a day for four days, because the water kept coming up through the floor, and they couldn’t figure out how to stop the water.”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about [ground water seepage] when you start to have it,” says Ihme. He likened it to dipping your house three to four inches into the lake. “You’re always going to have that 3-4 inches. You can suck up as much as you want, but it’s still going to come back in.”
On Day Five, the company dropped a submersible sump pump below the basement floor, and water shot out. They got multiple sump pumps working, then hooked up three gigantic dehumidifiers and 20 fans to dry everything out.
Over on M-109, along the base of Alligator Hill six months later, Chris Sack, owner of Great Lakes Tea & Spice, went down to his basement to find an inch and a half of standing water. He tried to pump it out himself, but, as with the Van Norts, it just kept coming back in. Sack called an excavator, who dug a huge hole next to the home. That immediately filled with water, just as they expected. They filled that with gravel, then dug a trench around the home, which they filled that with aggregate, then installed drainage tiles in the yard to pull water away from the house.
Sack’s new sump pump, set to turn on automatically when the water table reaches one inch below his foundation, has never turned off. This tells him that the water is still right at his foundation, which is, according to his builder, Jim May of Salisbury & May Construction in Traverse City, only three feet into the ground.
Before May built Sack’s home in 2001 (his move-in date was 9-11; yeah, that 9-11), county Health Department inspector Clay McNitt came out to determine the well and septic locations. He hand augured down to the water table, which he discovered four to six feet below where they wanted to plant the foundation. McNitt was also looking at long-term effects on the soil brought up in the boring he performed. “You go by seasonal high water tables — look at soil coloration and past evidence that shows where the water tables have been.” A few years of fluctuation “will not really show.” That said, he does take the current situation into consideration. “If I’ve got good color at 2-3 feet, and I’m wet and the soil is saturated, we’re not going to put a septic system in.”
Thing is, there really aren’t many codes that relate to the water table that would regulate where you can put your home. “Your foundation,” says Steve Haugen, building code official for Leelanau County Construction Codes, “has to be at least one foot above flood stage.
“The water table itself,” he adds, “is something different. If you’re building where it might have a high water table, you need to put in sumps. Some can be put inside, some may also be put outside where it drains into open air or a natural swale or reservoir area to keep it away from the house.”
Here’s the thing. If the home was built in the drought of the past 20 years or so (to 2013), the owner may need to take measures. The house is not doomed. There is always something that can be done. Haugen says he’s even seen houses put on stilts.
The question is, should there be more precautionary codes or guidelines? “We don’t control how people build their houses,” McNitt maintains. “That’s the builder’s and excavator’s job.”
Haugen agrees. “That’s their choice. You have to be cognizant of where you are building. There’s no place where you can’t build — not any more — unless somebody prohibits it.” It’s up to you, your builder and excavator, both say, to research the current high water line and where it’s been, then to decide how to move ahead. “They’re responsible for creating that safety margin.”
This may be true, but given this past year’s drastic rise in the water table, some kind of regulatory safeguards may be in order. “Each of the townships have their own zoning,” commented Leelanau Emergency Coordinator, Tom Skowronski, who recommends agencies and companies to help people clean up a mess, once it’s occurred. “They need to look at where they allow their houses to be built. Do some consideration on zoning to avert future flooding.”
Bob Ihme also sits on Glen Arbor’s Planning and Zoning Board. He says that the water table hasn’t been discussed in the past year.
So, once the damage is done, what does insurance cover? Nothing — not the restoration work, repair or content replacement. Flooding due to water coming in from the outside is generally not covered by homeowners’ policies. Susan L. Hiltz, public affairs director for AAA in Dearborn states, “Most standard homeowner’s policies do not cover this type of water damage.
When asked if a rider can be purchased to cover things like sump pump failure, she replied, “Most carriers offer endorsements which can be purchased. Limits and extent of coverage should be reviewed with [a] licensed insurance agent to assure the most appropriate coverage for the individual.” Same goes water damage for broken pipes. But water seeping in from the outside is not covered, unless you live in a declared flood plain, (which is set by U.S. geological surveys). In that case, your mortgage company will require that you carry special flood insurance. “Flood policies may vary,” warned Hiltz, “so it is best to refer to the National Flood Insurance Plan (NFIP) guidelines for individual locations. According to Skowronski, few people in Leelanau County live in a flood plain.
If a massive disaster does strike a large area, such as the flash flooding in Clare last spring, it’s a different story. The President declares it a national disaster area, and FEMA steps in. But when the damage is spotty and not widespread, the home or business owner is S.O.L. Like the Van Norts, whose damage tolled $35,000. And Chris Sack, who — $14,000 later — is still struggling to keep his house above water. Literally.
Worst case scenario? Sack may have to fill in his basement with sand or peat gravel and call it a day. But that’s probably not going to happen, if this wet weather really is just part of a natural cycle.
What you can do to prevent ground water seepage
Here is the best advice we gleaned from the experts we spoke to on this story.
• Have an engineer come in and evaluate the situation.
• For new homes, consider the long-term water table history of your site.
• For new and existing homes, (Because moving water around can affect others, homeowners must pull a county permit before taking any of the following measures.)
• Make sure the grade is down and away from the house.
• Dig a trench next to the foundation and fill it with aggregate
• Put in drainage tubes and tails to pull water away from the home
• Put in gutters with long downspouts
• Put in sump pumps. “A lot of people with sump pumps had their pumps fail because the motor burned out, so we put in a triple sump pump,” says Karen Van Nort. “If one goes out, the second one automatically goes on, with a battery backup.”
“Put a submersible sump pump 2½ to three feet below the lowest level of your foundation,” says Bob Ihme. “That pump starts pumping before [the water] gets into your actual basement. You have to discharge it out far enough away from the house.
