“Rain drops keep falling on my head…”
In Colorado, it doesn’t rain much, and when it does, it is usually a thundershower that’s here for a short while and then gone again. The last couple of days have seen us get real rain — 2-inches in the last couple of days as the rain goes on for hours on end. With the rain has come a “the planet is on fire” temperature of about 50º (plus or minus a couple). In the mountains, the temperature is much, MUCH, colder as they are getting hammered with snow. Yep, it is mid-August and the mountain passes have chain law requirements due to all the snow.
So, how does this impact me as a home owner?
Well, thanks to some quality ground packing when the building was constructed, my front step w/ walk and most of my patio are literally falling away from the building as the ground beneath it is sinking. This has also caused the added effect of changing the drainage around the place so that there’s now standing water in places where there shouldn’t be. Further, one of the ground drains appears to be clogged (looks like it is full of grass clippings).
So far, this doesn’t really impact me, but after talking to Alaska-K (who was out getting his mail), I decided to have a peek in my basement just to make sure no water came up from beneath the structure. No problems there, but there was a small amount of water coming in from the basement window. This was because the escape well had a good 2-inches of water in it, which put the water level right at the bottom of the window.
Nice.
Fortunately, there was a lull in the rain and so I had to come up with a solution to keep the next rain shower (which radar shows is on the way) from filling the well up again. I just happened to have some plastic, which I used to cover the well grate and hopefully, that’ll keep most of the water out.
Come Monday, the HOA and I will have to have a little chat about the drainage problem. Granted, these kind of rain events are rare for Colorado, but they do happen and next time, I want to make sure the water is drained away properly. At the same time, I want to see what they are going to do about the patio and step falling away. They’ve already mud-jacked it a couple of times according to my information (obviously before I lived there) and another mud-jacking would simply be another band-aid, but better than nothing.