Are You Ready for a Hurricane?

Here in central North Carolina we are a long way from the beach, but not from hurricanes. By the time a tropical system reaches Wake or Durham County it has left the storm surge behind and usually lost much of its wind. What it brings instead is rain: a lot of it, falling fast, often on ground that is already wet. Add the tornadoes, hail and severe thunderstorms our area sees every year, and storm preparation is part of owning a house in the Triangle, whether you live in Raleigh, Cary, Apex or Durham.

Atlantic hurricane season opens June 1, and the time to get ready is before the first named storm is on the map. Most of what follows takes an afternoon, and a drainage problem or an untested pump is far better found in a dry month than mid-storm.

Before the Storm: Around the House

Wind is what damages roofs, siding and windows, and the classic checklist still holds:

• Remove any weakened trees or branches that could fall on your home
• Repair any loose or damaged boards, siding, or brick on your home or storage shed
• Board up vulnerable doors and windows
• Clear objects away from windows, inside and out
• Bring outdoor furniture, grills, and other unsecured items inside
• Turn off any propane tanks connected to your home
• Move boats out of the driveway or yard to a more secure area

Before the Storm: Under the House

Inland, the storm damage we see under houses is far more often water than wind. Rain that falls faster than the ground can take it runs across the surface toward whatever is lowest, and on a lot of Triangle lots that is the foundation. Piedmont soil is weathered rock with a clay-rich layer that drains slowly, so once the ground is saturated, extra water has nowhere to go but sideways: along the outside of the foundation wall and, eventually, into the crawl space.

A few checks, done before the season rather than before a specific storm:

• Clean the gutters. An overflowing gutter pours a roof's worth of rain straight down beside the wall. Leaves and pine straw build up fast here, so a summer storm often finds them half full.
• Carry every downspout away from the foundation. Extensions get knocked off by mowers and never put back. A downspout emptying at the base of the wall is one of the simplest ways for a crawl space to take on water, and one of the cheapest to fix.
• Look at the grade. Soil, mulch and pine straw should slope away from the house and sit below the siding, not be piled up against it.
• Check the crawl space vents and access door. A vent at or below the soil line, or an access door that no longer closes, is an open path for surface water.
• Test the sump pump if you have one. Pour a bucket of water into the pit. The float should rise, the pump should start, the pit should empty, and the pump should stop.
• Follow the discharge line outside. Its end is where it gets buried by mulch, crushed by a tire or blocked by leaves. A pump that cannot discharge is not protecting anything.

Power Outages and the Pump

The storm that floods a crawl space is very often the same storm that takes the power out, and a sump pump with no power is just a weight at the bottom of a pit. If your crawl space has one, find out whether it has a battery backup and an alarm. A crawl space pump runs out of sight, so it needs a way to tell you it has stopped. And a pump that shares a circuit with something else that can trip the breaker may be off before the storm even starts.

If your crawl space has flooded in past storms and has no pump, find out why in spring, not September. Sometimes the answer is a pump; often it is a downspout or a grading fix.

During the Storm

• Stay out of the crawl space while it is raining hard, and never go in where standing water is near wiring or equipment. Nothing under the house is worth that risk.
• If you see water collecting against the foundation, take a photo and note the time. Where the water gathers, and when, is useful later.

After the Storm: What to Check

Once the rain has stopped and it is safe to go outside, walk the house. Give the crawl space a day or two before you judge it, because water keeps moving through saturated ground after the sky clears.

• Trees and limbs on or against the roof, and any that are now leaning toward the house.
• The roof, siding and windows, for missing shingles, lifted flashing or broken glass.
• The ground around the foundation, for washed-out soil, new low spots, or puddles still standing a day later.
• The crawl space, if you can get to it safely: standing water, a vapor barrier that has floated or pulled loose, wet or fallen insulation, or a fan of silt pointing back to where the water came in.
• The pump, if there is one: is it running, did it run, and is water coming out of the discharge outside?
• A musty smell in the house a day or two after the rain. That often means the crawl space got wet, even if you have not been down to look.

Photograph anything you find before you clean it up. Whether insurance covers water under the house depends on the cause and your policy, so call your carrier.

Standing water after a storm is not an emergency in the sense of needing someone tonight. Wood needs sustained moisture before it rots, so a single wet event does little harm on its own. What does the damage is a crawl space that stays wet for weeks afterward, or one that floods every time it rains hard. If yours does, our guide to what to do when water is under your house walks through the possible sources and the fix for each.

When to Call

If high winds, falling trees, or flooding damage your home's foundation, crawl space, or structure, Triangle Reconstruction can assess the damage and put together a repair plan to get your home back to normal. We have been working under houses across Wake and Durham counties and every county bordering them since 2012. Call (919) 924-7600.