Be sure your yard makes the grade this spring

A few DIY chores can keep snow melt, rain water from pooling near your home

One thing is certain with the spring season — and that’s water. We’re due for a season that’s full of rain and heavy with moisture.

Your home’s No. 1 foe is water. When it seeps into our houses in unexpected ways, it can cause damage to our major structure in the form of mould and rot of the building materials, and in some cases cause extreme flooding.

Protecting your home from water damage is one of your most important jobs as a homeowner.

You can’t always predict where water issues will present themselves, but you can take steps to protect yourself before you need to deal with a damaging flood.

AN UNPLANNED POOL?

The spring brings a lot of water. Between the melting snow and the heavy rains, our properties take on a lot of extra water this season. Use this season to clue yourself in to any potential water problems.

When the snow melted, or you had a heavy rainstorm, did you notice any big puddles gathering on your lawn? If you see this, typically it means you have a grading problem. You want your yard to be graded so that the property gradually slopes down the farther it is from your home.

This has the effect of moving water away from your house — which is what you want. When the water pools, it means there’s something off with the grading. Even what seems like a small landscaping project can have a big impact on your grading. So if you added a new garden or some paving stones, or planted a tree in the wrong place over the past few years, and you’re just starting to notice those puddles, odds are the grading got messed up somehow.

If you see those pools, be on the hunt for signs of water damage in your home. You’ll want to look out for a musty smell, or water stains. Hopefully, your foundation is properly watertight, but even if it is, you don’t want to put your home in a situation where it’s surrounded by a lot of water. After a certain point, it will find a way in. And if it does, it’s not a cheap fix to make it right.

Speaking of not letting your home get surrounded by water — take a close look at your eavestroughs and downspouts. Their role is to collect the water run-off from your roof and dump it far enough away from your home to harmlessly drain away.

After a particularly harsh winter, you may find that the eavestrough start to pull away from the roofline. If this happens, it can’t properly collect all that water, and the water will fall right toward your foundation. The same thing will happen if the downspout doesn’t extend far enough away from the property — all that water collected will just find itself right against the structure. Refasten any eavestrough that has started to pull away from the roofline by screwing them back into the fascia. You want your downspout to extend about three feet or a metre away from the home. If it’s not long enough, you can get an extender from your local hardware store and attach it yourself easily.

BACKFLOW PROTECTION

If the sewers become overwhelmed due to excessive water, it can start to back up into your home through your drains. Not only can that cause thousands of dollars worth of damage (or more), but it can fill your home with unsanitary water, contaminating your basement as well.

You can’t really predict if it’s going to happen, but you can prevent it pretty easily. Installing backflow protection to your basement drain is all it takes to stop this from happening. Some you can install right in your basement drain, others will need to be installed by a licensed plumber.

These are simple devices that allow water to travel in only one direction. When water starts reversing flow back toward your home, it shuts, preventing any water from regurgitating.

A wet spring shouldn’t rain on your parade. Even a few simple additions or maintenance jobs can have a big impact on the way your home handles water.