I live in State College, PA and we had 5.5 at my house but areas north and west had to be evacuated due to certain dams starting to reach flood stage and they were worried about the dams failing. I did just fine and the basement stayed dry. Our above ground pool runneth over we have had so much rain in the last couple of weeks. Lats week I pumed 3 inches of water out of it and after I mow I will be pumping another 2 -3 inches agin.
Gotta say flooding is bad but north of me is Mullica Hill NJ that had a twister land. At least with a flood you still have your house and trains, al be it they are soaked, but people there lost it all. Really makes you re evaluate things. PLEASE take pictures and document your trains by item. AND INSURE THEM!
The storm sideswiped us. We've had worse this summer. Connections on the gulf coast got pounded though.
@dkdkrd posted:Any report on the NJ Highrailer's layout?
The njhirailers layout is high and dry on the3rd floor. We had some leaks in the roof but it did not affect the layout. Still planning our first open house on 9/26. The closest flooding was on route 20 by the river fortunately that is on the other side of a large hill
We moved to Somerset, NJ a couple of years ago. Our whole house generator is at the old house. We had some ponding in the basement, but no real damage. We only lost electricity for a few minutes. The sump pump worked beautifully. Next door neighbor said she had 5" of water.
The sump pump was here when we bought the house. It has water power as backup. We had it tested when we bought the house and it worked. I don't know the cost of water backup for a sump pump, but for some of you it might be worth a little research.
https://www.waterdamagedefense...ed-backup-sump-pumps
Gerry
@gmorlitz posted:The sump pump was here when we bought the house. It has water power as backup. We had it tested when we bought the house and it worked. I don't know the cost of water backup for a sump pump, but for some of you it might be worth a little research.
I had one of these in a previous house. However, after our neighbor who also had one had it fill the basement with water while he was away, I rethought leaving it on all the time! The basic issue is, if the sump output line gets blocked, the pump fills the basement instead of draining it!
Another issue I see is the expense, for one day's running at our current city water rate, it would cost about $225! That's assuming 15 gal/min water use, which is what is quoted in your link.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I had one of these in a previous house. However, after our neighbor who also had one had it fill the basement with water while he was away, I rethought leaving it on all the time! The basic issue is, if the sump output line gets blocked, the pump fills the basement instead of draining it!
Another issue I see is the expense, for one day's running at our current city water rate, it would cost about $225! That's assuming 15 gal/min water use, which is what is quoted in your link.
Just a thought, and I don't think many people are aware of the option. I wasn't.
As I said, it was here when we bought the house. BTW, I would guess that if the sump output line gets blocked, you are going to have water in your basement one way or another. You would probably have less if you have a battery backup than water backup, but you'll still have water. I don't know if a sump pump is likely to run for 24 hours or the cost of water in various areas. Mine did not run for 24 hours in this drenching we just had. But $225 might be less expensive than remediation. Life has trade-offs.
Gerry
@gmorlitz posted:Just a thought, and I don't think many people are aware of the option. I wasn't.
As I said, it was here when we bought the house. BTW, I would guess that if the sump output line gets blocked, you are going to have water in your basement one way or another. You would probably have less if you have a battery backup than water backup, but you'll still have water. I don't know if a sump pump is likely to run for 24 hours or the cost of water in various areas. Mine did not run for 24 hours in this drenching we just had. But $225 might be less expensive than remediation. Life has trade-offs.
Gerry
You missed the point. If the drain got backed up, the water powered one will run until you shut it off, it'll always have a water level higher than the trip point. So, even if the water would have never gotten out of the sump, you still have a basement full of water!
As I said, I actually saw the result of this happening, luckily it wasn't at my house! For that storm, my basement was dry since my regular pump worked fine. The neighbor's basement had almost 4 foot of water in it, so they didn't have heat, hot water, electricity, and of course the finished basement was all trashed! The repairs took months, and they were out of the house for a several weeks until the utilities could be restored. The whole basement had to be gutted and redone.
Went home on route 1 yesterday as it was open, only as far as Quakerbridge Mall. Got diverted and lost, wound up in Princeton but was able to get home from there. This morning the 295 exit to route 1 was open. Coming off the ramp there were about 15 cars on the side of the road as well as a giant chunk of asphalt heaved up, so all traffic had to go around to get back to 1 if they were heading north. I'm glad I left a little earlier as I am sure I would have run into a cluster you know what if I left 10-15 minutes later which is my normal time. Was smooth sailing for me.
What about battery backups?
Had 8” up in the Poconos (Pike Co. PA). Fortunately, I don’t live near any bodies of water!!! I’ve had two flooded basements before I built my layout down there. The first was in early ‘96 - we had a blizzard which dropped three feet of snow over a weekend. About a week and a half later, it got pretty warm and we had 3” of rain in three hours resulting in 24” of water in the luckily empty basement. When that finally subsided, I put in a sump pump (hind site really is 20/20!!!). Several winters later, I had the reverse scenario - we had a bunch of rain, but then it got bitterly cold which resulted in the pump exhaust pipe freezing and backing up all the water in the basement... at that point, I added a second pump and had the exhaust pipes redone to avoid freezing. I am very grateful that my basement and layout is currently dry but I can’t relax just yet - one of my pumps is still going off!!!
I'm considering a second sump pump in this house. We really shouldn't have a water issue as it's a daylight basement, and when these were built they have french drains to the storm sewer. Also, all the downspouts are piped directly to the storm sewer. I've only heard the sump pump run a couple of times in three years, and it's trip point about 18" below the floor level. The sump pump drains directly to the storm sewer as well. We've had a couple of really big storms, including Ida this time, and so far so good.
I do have a secondary sump pump with a hose that if I get a water alarm (6" below floor level), I can drop in the hole and start pumping.
There is a forumite that lives in Manville nj, a town that is suffering right now. Lets hope clifford and his layout are faring well.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I had one of these in a previous house. However, after our neighbor who also had one had it fill the basement with water while he was away, I rethought leaving it on all the time! The basic issue is, if the sump output line gets blocked, the pump fills the basement instead of draining it!
Another issue I see is the expense, for one day's running at our current city water rate, it would cost about $225! That's assuming 15 gal/min water use, which is what is quoted in your link.
While stll married to my first (evil) wife we spent some time in her mom's house _ we had moved back from another state and she needed help. One of my wife's idiot brothers did not install the sump pump correctly, I think the arm would stick instead of raise. The water came in through the sump well. I had a lot of models and all of my guns down there. I spent a long time tearing up the carpet and pad after it dried.
Live in a 107 year old house(50 miles east of NYC on the sound), first water issue was Agnes in 1972(?). Local weather was comparing that to this storm. I have a down spout that has issues. Earlier this summer, forgot which storm, I started to leave a 40 gallon Rubbermaid garbage can under it. Wednesday night from 8PM to 3 AM I dumped that full can into the street on the average of every 20-30 minutes. The home of the future crappy basement layout stayed dry along with all my trains & Mianne benchwork. Hoping to start construction soon. Unfortunately life seems to get in the way.
Just to underscore the perversity of the weather/climate gods, in the 24 h period from 4 am Wed to 4 am Thurs, both Central Park ( 7.2 inches) and EWR (8.4 inches) got more rainfall than most of the SF Bay Area did all this past year* - SF is 9 inches (normal is 23.7) and the three commercial airports are: SFO 7.3 (normal is 20.7); OAK 7.6 (normal is 20.8) and SJC 5.3 (normal is 15.8). There's a big north to south rainfall gradient here. Santa Rosa - which is in one of the nine Bay Area counties - but fairly far north of the actual Bay - got 12.9 inches so far (normal is 36.3), more than double what is recorded at San Jose airport for both current and 'normal' numbers. Sierra snowpack is way below normal (don't recall the numbers), which is why we're burning up...
*rainfall year starts October 1 -- we get ~90% of our rainfall (meager as it has been the past two years) between mid-November and mid-April
I live near my friend Joe Krasko and in Yonkers, NY, and supposedly we had 7.8 inches. Luckily, I bought a submersible pump after we got 7.2 inches not too long ago. Boy, it's been a wet summer...We heard on the news that July was the third wettest on record and August was the fourth wettest, so the ground is a bit damp! With this one storm, we already have more than the whole average rain for September.
A little mopping, pump work and fans working until 3:30am to get ahead of it and Voila, almost back to normal.
The good news is one weather forecaster called this a "200-year storm."
So, I figure my clone will deal with the next one. 
While dealing with the water, I was glad to take a break to grab another PRR prewar switcher off of eBay.
Hang in there fellow basement dwellers.
Tom
I hope no layouts were damaged in the storm. For us here in Florida, we call what you all experienced “a little rain.” This is a video I took in November 2020 after a storm the night before. Fortunately, the Jeep has a decent suspension lift. I guess this is why we don’t have basements down here -
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@jim sutter posted:The west coast is high and dry. Lakes out there are drying up. Maybe we should build a pipe line. It could run it from the east coast to the west coast. Every time we get hit with all this rain, maybe we could pipe it to the west coast.
Unfortunately, you can't pump it from streets and basements everywhere on the east coast to forests and everywhere else that needs it in the west. (Currently there are 85 large fires burning in 12 states.) Too bad we can't pump water to the high carbon emitting fires burning in Siberia (larger than all the other fires burning in the world put together), which is melting the permafrost and releasing hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Good news everywhere!
This is the new norm, and it's going to get worse. Time to put those layouts on stilts!
Thanks, Ben, re the NJHR update. Never been there...unfortunately. I thought it was not at ground level, but I've watched so many roofs being ripped off by the winds in news videos, that I still harbored thoughts that the worst might have occurred.
My other concern is Ellicott City, MD. They had a couple of disastrous deluges rip through their quaint town in the past 20 or so years. Affected the B&O historical station there, I believe. Anyone have a report?
Can't say I recall a storm like Sandy or Ida with this sort of rain dump hitting here in mid-Michigan since 1966, the year I moved here following graduation. OTOH, we've had wet basements from Spring phenomena...Heavy/deep snows on frozen ground suddenly hit with a very warm weather spell (Fast thaw on ground that isn't very absorbent), coupled with a 2-3 day rain from a slow-moving Great Lakes storm that would've been a record-busting snow 2 weeks earlier!!! Result?...A cross-eyed sump pump with its tongue hanging out!! The last of which was an all-night pail-bail to stay ahead of the rising level in the sump drain (no power, of course.)
So, we went all out...new, larger sump pump...checked annually. Whole house natural gas-powered generator (city gas), and a water-siphoned sump pump (city water). Also, our home security system monitors the situation in our absence. All those installations culminated about 20 years ago.
Well, guess what?... It's been a great investment! Since then the generator has kicked in for about a total of 30 minutes for all the comparatively puny storms we've had. We have a stand-by sump pump sitting in the basement...never had to use. Ditto the water siphon. Was it worth it? Well, duh!
dkdkrd,
You're lucky. Here in SE Michigan we had an unusual summer. 4 localized gully-washers rolled through in a span of about 5 weeks. The first of them of them dropped at least 8" on top of our community in 4 hours. I can easily imagine what the folks back East have been going through over the past few days. We had the same kinds of flooding -- streets, freeways, backyards, and basements.
Now this normally happens here, but quite rarely -- on average about once per decade, so we've seen it and have dealt with the flooded basements before. But there's usually just enough time between them to forget that they occur, and how much work it is to clean things up afterward.
The current issue is that it happened three times during the 2010's, instead of once, and has now kicked off the 2020's very early. It pays to be prepared, and we're slowly getting into that mode because of this.
Good luck to everyone who is presently dealing with the excess water, regardless of where you are.
Mike
We dodged any issues, though there was a ton of rain and it looked like a angry river in our back yard. One of my neighbors wasn't so lucky... I'm not sure I'd be working down there with water pouring over energized electrical circuits, but that's a whole different issue! 
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I at present don't have a lay-out but many trains and lay-out stuff in the basement. I live about a half mile UP THE HILL from the Schuylkill River, up river from Philly. This is a Limestone laden area with several road cave-ins. With big storms we get water in the basement. My little sub-pump with garden hose took care of the water that covered less than half the basement several inches. Two other big storms in my life, we had to have the fire company drain the basement. Down at the river it overflowed it's banks and covered roads two to three blocks away from the river, one I have never seen blocked off before in my memory. The next town up the river Norristown set flood stage record high [Philly hit second highest on record, that record stood for 152 years]. Across the river from Norristown is Bridgeport the pictures you have seen Nationally of firemen reusing people out of their second story window is from there.
I work in Ambler, the other side of Ambler, Ambler/Upper Dublin got hit with one of the Tornados. Work was with-out power for 26 hours or more, while on my way home from work yesterday I saw the electric company was still working on restoring other electric lines in the area 48+ hours after the storm. The Philadelphia TV viewing area has been hit with 25 Tornados already this year. Last year 11.
I have lived through six of these storms (I'll be 73 in December) in my life: Hazel, Donna, Agnes, Floyd, Sandy and Ida, all comparable.
Redball342
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I'm considering a second sump pump in this house. We really shouldn't have a water issue as it's a daylight basement, and when these were built they have french drains to the storm sewer. Also, all the downspouts are piped directly to the storm sewer. I've only heard the sump pump run a couple of times in three years, and it's trip point about 18" below the floor level. The sump pump drains directly to the storm sewer as well. We've had a couple of really big storms, including Ida this time, and so far so good.
I do have a secondary sump pump with a hose that if I get a water alarm (6" below floor level), I can drop in the hole and start pumping.
You are lucky, John, my town doesn't allow discharging water into the storm sewer in the street through a cut in the curb, and doing what they suggest,tapping into a 12" pipe buried in the street would be prohibitively expensive. If I lived in the house next door they have a storm grate on the curb, that would be easy to connect to). I have had the problem where the discharge pipe froze and then we had water and burned out the pump ( I have a backup pump on hand at all times).
Battery backup is a good thing or some kind of heavy duty UPS unit, the problem is that will last if the pump runs a lot maybe 6 to 8 hours, depending on the battery and how much the pump runs, infrequent runs might be a day. It basically is there for short loss of power or for where it happens in middle of night or you aren't there, to allow you if you have it to run a generator or until power comes back.
My french drain system works great w the pump I have, I get it flushed every 5 yrs or so.
Saw this on the local news from New Jersey.
Scary, but luckily the family was able to escape.
@bigkid posted:You are lucky, John, my town doesn't allow discharging water into the storm sewer in the street through a cut in the curb, and doing what they suggest,tapping into a 12" pipe buried in the street would be prohibitively expensive.
Since this is a condo community, all of the drains were engineered when the places were built. The storm drain all my water from the roof and sump dumps into is actually at the rear of the house. There is also a separate storm drain in the street as well. The storm drain pipes look to be around three feet in diameter when I look into the grates. I know the one at the rear was overloaded because the low point of the lawn was a huge river at the height of the storm! I would imagine a storm drain 12" in diameter would be close to useless, at least around here!
@RSJB18 posted:Saw this on the local news from New Jersey.
Scary, but luckily the family was able to escape.
That's insane! I"m glad they got out, but they're likely to be building a new house! I can't imagine what happened to the structure when a whole wall was blown out!
The woman hear screaming in the video (mom) was interviewed yesterday. Contractors were supporting the wall with screw jacks behind her. I guess the house is saveable.
Well, they'll be gutting that whole level to fix it, we're talking MAJOR repairs at the very least! Also, all the stuff like heat, electric, hot water, etc. will be replaced. Figuring that flood damage isn't covered by Homeowners Insurance as a rule, they're in a major financial hole!
@bluelinec4 posted:The njhirailers layout is high and dry on the3rd floor. =
Sure glad to hear that! I thought about you guys and gals last night when I saw a live news report from Paterson, NJ.
I live on LI and was away out west for both of the recent storms. My daughter was dog/house sitting and, other than the dog being scared, we had only about a quart of water in the basement.
After having 6 feet of water in the basement when we lived in Queens, NY, I made sure to buy "high and dry" when we bought our home here.
My brother in NJ, despite having an elaborate french drain and multi-pump system, had 6 inches in his basement.
The friends who were traveling with us live in Queens and came home to 5 inches of backed up sewerage (yuk) in their basement.
@Lionelski posted:The friends who were traveling with us live in Queens and came home to 5 inches of backed up sewerage (yuk) in their basement.
I worry about this more than plain flooding. Our community is on a slope, and I'm near the lower end and about 20 feet higher than the sewer pumping station. I bought the sewer backup insurance for that reason. The slope of our lot minimizes the issue of water entry.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I worry about this more than plain flooding. Our community is on a slope, and I'm near the lower end and about 20 feet higher than the sewer pumping station. I bought the sewer backup insurance for that reason. The slope of our lot minimizes the issue of water entry.
You can have a back flow preventer installed if you want to be more pro-active than buying insurance. I was going to get on for my last house but we ended up moving. There was high water a year later. I hope the new owners maintained the flood insurance policy. There 2as some nonsense about the flood maps being redrawn and the mortgage company did not think it was needed anymore. I kept it anyway. No regrets.
I looked into the back-flow preventer, it would be pretty messy here as it would have to be done outside in the line. The quote was $3K to dig up the pipe and install it, then I have to restore the lawn as well.
I don't think the possibility is very high that I'll get a backup, but I figured the first $25,000 would be on someone else if I do. 
Just about everywhere has weather issues. Some of the places I have lived follow.
St. Louis, MO- flooding: Arkansas- tornadoes, freezing rain and iced over passes: South Texas- only 35 inches rains per year and hurricanes: Pittsburgh, PA snow, icy hills, Mobil, AL, Beaumont, TX , Baton Rouge, LA - Hurricanes and 60-70 inches rain per year and flooding: Kingston Jamaica - Hurricanes and droughts
So you have to adapt for several of the most sought after locations to live or retire like Florida, Colorado, Arizona and California have their major weather issues too.
Charlie
@Choo Choo Charlie posted:Just about everywhere has weather issues. Some of the places I have lived follow.
St. Louis, MO- flooding: Arkansas- tornadoes, freezing rain and iced over passes: South Texas- only 35 inches rains per year and hurricanes: Pittsburgh, PA snow, icy hills, Mobil, AL, Beaumont, TX , Baton Rouge, LA - Hurricanes and 60-70 inches rain per year and flooding: Kingston Jamaica - Hurricanes and droughts
So you have to adapt for several of the most sought after locations to live or retire like Florida, Colorado, Arizona and California have their major weather issues too.
Charlie
So true! Add to that volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis….the world is a dangerous place and we haven’t even mentioned rogue humans yet.
