Garage floor driveway elevation issue

[garmar60]

In need of some ideas
We have been in our house for 20 years. The garage is 25 x 31. 10 ft walls. Used as a shop. The driveway is 130 ft long and same width for about 60 the goes to 20 ft to the street. About 5 years ago the city changed the drainage of the whole area and now about 2 to 3 times a year I get water as deep as the side wall on my pickup tires in the driveway and about 2 to3” in the garage when we get a hard rain. I am an hour east of Houston and we were a island during Harvey it drains quick when it stops but I hate wading in the driveway. How can I raise the garage floor and driveway

Floor: pour concrete on top of existing. Inside the wood framed walls. Lift the garage to pour under the walls. Lift and set blocks under wall then pour. Support walls inside and cut off stud and bottom plate. Pour chain wall or blocks to new bottom plate. What if going up 6”. Do I put sand on top a few inches then pour. Not sure it would save concret. I want to do as much as I can my self and if I do it stages I should be able to.

Driveway will have to pour on top to transition at 20 ft. We can cut out a section at the transition to avoid a thin taper

Thanks for reading
Gary

[EdL]

File a lawsuit against the city.....seriously.

Drainage law is pretty clear.

Ed

[woodhead]

File a lawsuit against the city.....seriously.

Drainage law is pretty clear.

Ed

I had some issues when they repaved our road. We were left with a huge puddle, in the street, across the front of our entire property. The water no longer went around the corner, as they raised the grade by 4 ". Called the Town. Met with an engineer. Showed him pics. They added basins. problem solved.


Al

[Robert Adams]

File a lawsuit against the city.....seriously.

Drainage law is pretty clear.

Ed

This does work. Our crappy town here doesn't put in storm sewers or even maintain ditches but there was a group of houses that were flooded due to some city construction. The owners backed by their insurance companies sued the city and won. 

     We have an issue as well that's similar. Since there really isn't any storm water control and the street is not cut down into the soil below the surrounding soil when it rains the water runs down the street hits the pile of sand that accumulates on the other side of the road then the water is routed directly to our driveway. 
      I have had water in our garage twice during heavy rainfall up to 3" deep. 

      I'm thinking a piece of fire hose on the driveway to divert the water....  Not worth suing the city as we are moving in a year or so. But it's sad that the city here doesn't do anything unless sued...

[crokett™]

For once I agree with the filing a lawsuit angle. A guy I worked with a few years back had a similar problem here with his front yard after the city did roadwork. It was not easy and took over a year, but eventually he got the city to regrade and put in the necessary drainage to fix his yard. It helped that some neighbors had similar problems. You might want to talk to your neighbors. I will say get pictures of after a heavy rain if you don't have any. Preferably you have pictures of what it looked like before the city fixed things.

[Lynden]

When you say "the city changed the drainage" in the area what changes did they make? Did they make changes to the street in front of your house causing water to flow onto your lot frontage and down your driveway, or was it some other type of change? How much of an on-site flooding problem did you have before the city made the changes? Have you talked to a civil engineer about solutions to the problem?

[Mr_Mike]

I agree you need to make this the city's fault. I'm sure that it's different all over the country, but here, we can make no changes that change the drainage on or off a property.

As previously mentioned, water run off laws are generally fairly strict, especially as they affect adjacent properties. I'd have complained long ago.

[tomsteve]

reads quite unanamous. lifting a 25 by 31 garage and those ideas are no small feat and $$$$$$.

[Robert Adams]

reads quite unanamous. lifting a 25 by 31 garage and those ideas are no small feat and $$$$$$.

        Not really that hard to do. The neighbor of my grandmother in Detroit did just that. He wanted to tear down and build a new garage and the city was going to make him go through lots of hoops and fees so he just jacked his up rebuilt the walls with new lumber and added to the siding. 

           It went so well that the neighbor on the other side had him do theirs as well because of flooding in the garage.

[Snipe Hunter]

My neighbor dealt with water off the street filling the culvert, running down his driveway to his house. He never did a thing about it except build a little wall to divert it around his house. He sold his house and the new owner called the county about the problem. The city was out within a few days, widened the culvert, ran a big pipe under his driveway. The replaced that driveway at the street where the pipe went under it.

Whoever owns the street also owns the responsibility of it's proper drainage.