The combination of heavy snowfall, rapid melt, and extended power outages created conditions for flooding inside many Simcoe County homes
As Simcoe County residents continue to clean up debris outside of their homes from the recent ice storm, some are also dealing with issues inside their homes.
Eric Choi, general manager of Harris Plumbing, told BarrieToday, an affiliate of BradfordToday and InnisfilToday, that the Barrie-based company has received hundreds of calls for assistance to deal with flooding in basements and crawl spaces.
“This last week wasn’t so bad, but right in the thick of the storm, we were getting calls all day and all night from members of the community facing flooding or the risk of floods,” he said.
All main sump pumps run off of electricity, and given many homes were without power for several days, that resulted in back ups, noted Choi.
“We already had a lot of snow this year, much more than usual. A lot of the homes affected were near fresh water sources like rivers and the ground water levels were much higher this year than previous years because of the snow melt,” he said. “To top it all off, there was no power to sump pumps. It was just the perfect storm in a lot of people’s homes.”
A sump pump, he explained, pumps water away from the foundation of the home.
In order to avoid finding themselves in a similar situation in the future, Choi suggests homeowners first start by ensuring their main sump pump is in proper working order.
“We had a lot of calls come in from customers whose sump pumps were (several years old). When push came to shove and they were supposed to run, even if they had power, it wasn’t working or there were burning smells coming from the motor,” he said. “In terms of back ups, there are battery backup systems that operate off of marine batteries and give between 10 and 20 hours of usage. Those buy you time in the event you have no power.”
Alternatively, there are backup pumps which use municipal water pressure to operate, he noted.
“It’s like a siphon-action thing where the water supply from the city would force water out of the home. It creates a vacuum and sucks up other water that is in the pit with it. Those work without batteries.”
Choi estimates staff have spent upwards of 400 hours responding to customer concerns over the last two weeks, telling BarrieToday they have seen everything, including complete basement floods where the water was halfway up the basement.
“Some of the worst stories were people who had just recently finished their basement. We got a lot of calls from senior citizens. I got calls from people in their 70s or 80s in their crawl space bailing water out for 30 or 40 hours straight,” he said. “We just had such a backlog of people calling. We wanted to get out faster but there was only so much we could do as well. It was definitely a traumatic experience for many people.”
