I don't have a floor drain, but I have a sump (with a pump). Unfortunately, it's surrounded by a rubber lip. I don't know why, but there must be a resson????????? so I'm afraid to try to cut if off.
I didn put a few holes in it, but though they are floor level, they are small and I think the water would have to be 1/2" high to get through the holes.
In addition, it's on the other side of the room from the sink and washing machine so it will get a lot of thigns wet before the water gets there.
And I've lost count of how many times my basement has gotten wet, 8 or
How offen (sic) does it actually happen, in terms of how many washers are in use?
In your spare time, conduct a survey of washer owners around the world and determine what percentage turn off the water when not in use.
Then determine how many of them have had their hose burst/leak vs. the total and also vs. the hoses of the small percentage of owners that do turn them off.
I'm guessing that on global basis (or even a national basis, if you haven't got enough time for a global survey) that the percentage of hose issues is extremely small. If it really was a huge problem, some government agency would have mandated some type of automated shut off within the washer itself or hoses with flow sensor shut offs.
Yes, it's bad when it happens, but so is a fire, car accident, etc. The only question I'm asking, is how offen (sic) does it actually happen?
Back in 60's, I used to work in one of those corner pharmacies that we had in the old days. A classic NYC block** with a row of stores on the ground floor and apartments above. The basement floor was always damp. Add puddles after a rain. Water bugs 2" - 3" long. (I once stomped one with my boot, heard it crunch under the force, and when I lifted up my foot, it scurried away. Freaked me out!) Everything was on pallets. Everything stayed dry, except for our shoes, the bottom of the pallets and, of course, the water bugs.
If my basement got wet as often as yours, there would be nothing in direct contact with the floor except for pallets or the legs of shelving units. Or I'd determine the root cause and do my best to eliminate it.
In the 40 years I've lived in my house, my basement floor got wet once, although there is clear evidence that it had gotten wet more often than that before I moved in.
The bottom of the back/basement door is lower than the yard itself. That cannot be fixed. There is a 5' square "sunken patio" right outside the door which is 4" below the threshold and 4" below the yard itself. The yard slopes
*toward* the sunken area. During a "normal" rain event, any water that flowed in the sunken patio area was able to drain between the patio blocks and into the sandy soil. However, during a torrential downpour, like those summer deluges that sometimes occur, the water could not drain fast enough. The patio area would fill up and the water would come in under the door.
As soon as I realized what was happening (after I bailed out the patio area a few times) I installed a dry well.
I obtained a 55 gallon plastic barrel from a friend that worked at a local brewery. I dug a hole deep enough to fit the barrel in, cut some holes in the top and bottom and dropped the barrel into the hole. I then built a 5' x 5' "deck square" and put it on top of the remaining patio blocks. That covered the top of the barrel and leveled out the entry way. It would now require at least 55 gallons of water to fill the barrel, then enough more to fill the patio area, before the water could come into the house. Could that happen? Yes. Has it happened? Not in 4 decades.
**Across the street from the pharmacy was a car wash. Every now and then my boss would hand me small brown paper bag, containing something shaped like brick, but softer and lighter. I didn't need to open the bag to know what was inside. I would take it over the car wash, go into the office, and give the bag to the big cigar smoking guy behind the big desk. (Both the cigar and the guy were big.) There were usually a couple of more big cigar smoking guys hanging out on the big leather couch. Sometimes I'd stay for coffee or a soda, we'd talk about the Mets or the Jets or other non-consequential stuff. It was kind of cool for a 16 YO. They were really nice guys.
A few years later, I went into the service and was serving overseas. My mom mailed me an article detailing the gruesome scene that the employees found when they opened the pharmacy. My boss was found face down on the floor behind the counter where the prescriptions were filled, with his hands tied behind his back and a single bullet hole in the back of his head. The article said that it looked like the place had been ransacked, (open drawers, pill bottles on the floor, etc.) They (supposedly) suspected a robbery. Based on the pictures that accompanied the article, I knew that that is what the pharmacy area looked like all the time. There just wasn't enough storage room so things were always messy. This was no robbery and I'm sure the cops knew it. Maybe the car wash guys weren't as nice as I thought they were. ;-)
Yes, mine is still there. Prospect Drugs, corner of Greene and Vanderbilt, Brooklyn open 10-6 today, 9-7 on weekdays.
They woudln't let me in the basement, I'm sure.
They teach the water bugs how to snap their fingers, so that humans think they have killed them.
I thought about that but it would be end up wasting space. I will worry about the bottom layer when I finally move. Or clean. Or die, whichever comes first.
There were 10? different root causes. T hey've all been fixed, but by now I think some thing new will arise.
One house I looked at had water marks on the basement wall, about 2 feet above the floor. T here was a stream accross the street that people told me had flooding problems. Thehy fixed it and it hasn't flooded in
40 years, but I've looked at the whole stream and I can't tell what they did to fix it.
That might be my next flood. My basement window is not lower than the yard, but my own stream has gotten within 1 inch of the height of my property. Of course it has to spread out after that inch, so it won't rise as fast, and the basement window is iirc 6" higher than the edge of the property, but if it ever rises 7 inches** more, there will be endless water to fill my basement. I thought of cutting a piece of plywood to fill the space of the window, which might work for your door problem too.
**It currently rises from 6" to 8 feet when it floods.
Good.
Very good.
My house was broken into Sunday around 6PM the first summer I llived here. The police came and looked upstairs and one guy said, It looks like he was here for a long time, but when I'd been upstairs already and I knew it looked like that all the time. Perhaps that was his standard line when he thought someone was messy.
The guy at the hardware store said he sold a lot of them, always after the first one leaked.
It's the risk vs. damage ratio that matters. If they don't want to give an alarmist warning, they could probably find out how many hose leaks, serious enough to damage something or require mopping the floor, actually occur while the water is on but the machine is not in use for washign clothes. I'll be someone already knows.
It's not my responsibility.
NMR
I don't know about that. Governments concern themselves in advance with sickness, especially from contagious diseases, death, fires, and flooding caused by rivers. I've never heard of them worry in advance about water leaks unless false advertising was involved. With other things they only concern themsleves after the fact by hosting lawsuits.
One guy sold "a lot" of them? Well, then, now I'm convinced of how big of an issue it is. Thanks for that data.
Yep...I implied that down below.
Why do you think it's their responsibility? They manufacture washing machines, not the hoses. I'm not even sure why they felt it necessary to say: "CAUTION Make sure to use new hoses..."
I didn't and my washer new washer worked just fine. My new machine monitors the incoming water for proper flow rate and it didn't throw up any error codes, so it seems to me that my old hoses are just fine..
Just a thought...What if I replace my hoses one wash before buying a new machine? My hoses would be used. Should I still heed their all-caps CAUTION warning and get new ones? Seems a tad excessive.
And the hose replacement interval is not theirs.
ATHRIINT
I don't care. You're the one that said ..."that it offen (sic) happens when water is left on." All I did was ask "How offen (sic)?"
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