On Friday night a very fierce storm came from the south west and this always means trouble. The storm itself was relatively small in size but it packed a punch. The rain lashed the house from all sides and as the wind swirled around the house it finally moved to the south east of the house and the rain by this time was torrential. I went down stairs to see if the new build was holding up ok. The weak spot has always been the garage because of the slight fall in the concrete towards to garage. I saw a trickle of water coming under the new wall next to the front door as the water filled up the drain across the front of the garage door.

I quickly opened the door and grabbed the broom and started to sweep the water back out towards the new drain, but the water just kept on coming and bringing with it the detritus and dirt from the garden on the east side. The water was running off next doors property which always happens when the rain gets heavy like this but there was also a mound of earth that had yet to be moved from all the construction work going on and it seemed to be encouraging the water to come my way. So with the water from next door and the wind blowing it perfectly into the garage it was a bit of a fight to keep it out.

I knew the storm wouldn’t last long which was a little bit of comfort and the brush I was using was very effective in pushing the water back out towards to new drain and then suddenly it was all over and the drain that had been overwhelmed began to work once more.

No lasting damage thankfully, the water covered a fair bit of the floor but only touched one of the new walls and did no damage. Earlier in the day there had been things all over the garage floor, tools and the like, and I decided to put it all back on the shelves since I had lined the walls where the shelving would go………..a lucky move me thinks.

So on Saturday and Sunday I spent both days in the garden trying to modify the garden to try and make it more difficult for the water to reach the garage. It’s still a work in progress. The weather has been hot; around 36°C and the humidity high so it does not take long to get soaked in sweat and get fatigued and dehydrated. Trying to design something that you may think will work is the problem because there is no way of testing this until the next storm which I think they expect on Tuesday and so I have one more day to get it finished. It’s currently Sunday evening and tomorrow I should get it finished and hopefully all my hard work will be worthwhile because I’ve spent a lot of time and effort changing the downstairs area, not to mention the money.

It’s now Monday afternoon and I’m not completely finished but I think I have done enough…….I’ve dug a new drain down the side of the house which will hopefully remove any overflow but trying to get the fall is the problem. The ground is hard and of course the longer the trench the deeper it needs to be, this is a work in progress .I’ll have to line it or maybe I might dig it deeper and put in some pvc which would be the best option but it’s going to take a few more hours to achieve that.

So I’m hoping that I won’t get a repeat performance of Friday evening but I guess only time will tell.