# Barn flooded!!!!!



## PattySh (Apr 27, 2011)

Stupid weather. Was up last nite til 3am redirecting flooding water and vaccuming up water flooding into my milking room. Luckily the goat/horse/cow living areas were not affected. Water was running right thru my  cow paddock and into my rabbit room and into the milking room. What a mess. My daughter, husband and I worked on it for a couple of hours. Daughter could not get to work today and schools are closed, all roads out are flooded and closed. Luckily we are stocked up on grain, and have a full freezer, pantry, fresh eggs and milk. Guess we'll make some goat cheese today with fresh chives and garlic from the garden.


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## ksalvagno (Apr 27, 2011)

I feel your pain. Our barns flooded once this year. We had to walk alpacas through thigh deep water to get to higher ground and had to put goats up in our hayloft. Not a fun night.


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## patandchickens (Apr 27, 2011)

I hear ya. Our barn used to flood regularly (some nitwits built it at almost the lowest part of hte property, 40 years ago, and it is slightly below ground level ), now it only floods "slightly and occasionally". It really, really sucks to take that first step in there and hear "splash!".

When you hit dry season, it might be worth putting in a proper sump hole that you can drop a sump pump into if this happens again -- you want it strategically located so that animals (or people) won't fall into it gratuitously (tho you can surround or cover it when not in use, I would not rely *entirely* on just that) and in the place where water first starts to pool (not necessarily where the water enters) so the pump can keep the tide from rising very high. Well unless your electricity goes out. But, *most* of the time 

Hang in there, good luck,

Pat


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## elevan (Apr 27, 2011)

I feel for you!  I have the fear that our barn is gonna flood completely.  We've got standing water in the feed room right now and the horse side of the barn is a mucky mess.  The goats side is is still ok right now.

But around the barn some areas of the earth are starting to liquify there is so much water! Ugh! Poo soup!


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## PattySh (Apr 27, 2011)

The barn is ok for now. More rain expected tonight. Tons of flooding in town, lots of roads closed around here. Found a nice old Kalamazoo wood cook stove on Craigslist. Made it out today, did a long road trip to pick it up.


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## goodhors (Apr 28, 2011)

Come the dry weather, you may want to take strong measures to prevent future flooding.  We had a low area barn, had running water from North to South!

Locally you can rent machinery, so husband got a backhoe and ditched  around the barn, thru the paddocks, and we laid drain tile.

Getting ready beforehand, we had large piles of peastone, a roll of geotextile fabric, drain tile with the "sock" of fabric covering.  He had everything planned out and went to town with the machine.

Have to say that since doing that job that things are VASTLY improved.  Even with extremely heavy rains, the water leaves as fast as it can.  Well worth the time and effort of doing the job well, putting the money into it.  We used the 6" flexible tubing, no use using the small and getting it overpowered.

Machine made things a lot easier, moving dirt, digging trenches, refilling with the stone.  The geotextile fabric, layered between, prevents dirt getting mixed with the stone, removing the drainage value.  Fabric is easy to use, lightweight to move, though we had to buy online and have it shipped here.  No local sellers.  You might check with landscapers, the fabric is more commonly used now.  We bought a whole roll, has come in handy when we put in a driveway in a wet area, and other folks have tried to buy it off us for themselves.

I thought the machine rental was reasonable, for all the use we got out of it.  Certainly speeded things up, allowed us to do a BETTER job than hand work would allow.  Just so much more powerful, EASIER, EASIER, than lugging wheelbarrows of stone, moving dirt.  We didn't half-kill ourselves doing the job.

He also cleaned the big drainage ditches while the machine was here, so the tile could drain away from the barns.  He was not a machine operator when we started this, but learned fast.  I can drive the machines as well, not difficult and the rental guy will give you a quickie lesson.  Then you are off and running.

Ditch water is rather deep here with inch and a half of rain since midnight, but not running into the barn or making things impassable in the back yard.

Drainage work is WELL WORTH the time invested, money cost, to get done.


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## elevan (Apr 28, 2011)

I very much agree with goodhors!

The guy that "installed" our pond still owes us some labor so when the ground is firmer he will be coming back to install drainage for the barn.    Good call on the fabric, I'll have to find some before then.


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## DonnaBelle (Apr 28, 2011)

Drainage is the key to any building anywhere.  We built houses in Florida and DH always insisted in bringing in enough fill to get the houses up so they could be properly graded around.  We lost some contracts to builders who wouldn't require it, thus the contract was less.  We used allowances, but all some people could think of was that it was "sandy dirt" the water will drain off.

We are now in Oklahoma, but he still brought in fill when we build our house and the chicken house and barn. 

When we built houses, anyone we built for could call us day or night at home.  We never had any problems with people bothering us, but then DH held the subs feet to the fire!!  And if something was wrong, we wanted to know it.

Building a house?  Bring in the dirt!!

Donnabelle


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## patandchickens (Apr 28, 2011)

You usually don't need heavy machinery to do drainage ditches -- just time and a shovel can work wonders. Not time all at once, but like an hour or two a day as time permits.

The property we're on now is in a low spot in the landscape with a fairly large "watershed", further complicated by the facts that a) when the original owners built the house and barn 40 yrs ago they brilliantly chose to put them in almost the lowest part of the property right where the water has to drain through, and b) they also cleverly built a 1/2-mile training track (now long-since gone to grass) RIGHT SMACK ACROSS the natural drainage path of the water.  So not only is there a whole lotta water that wants to go from point A to point B thru the house and barn, it is impeded in its journey at several points by the track berm.

Since nobody lived in this house for very long before we bought it 8 yrs ago I would conclude that they all bought it in the dry season , and apparently relied exclusively on gas-powered pumps to alleviate the backing up of the water, and the barn flooded a whole lot on a frequent basis, the basement only occasionally (house is at least on a bit of fill).

We bought this place during wet season so we knew more or less what we were getting, plus all the wetland plants and wetland soils were kind of a giveaway and the high-water marks in the barn LOL

In the eight yrs we've been here, I have enlarged the few existing ditches, greatly extended them, cut ditches thru the track berms so water can actually (gasp!) flow THRU the property instead of backing up, dug additional ditches and trenches elsewhere, and installed a second sump in the barn. (Also did some downspout and grading work on house, adn installed battery-backup for basement sump pump, which let me tell you is a LIFESAVER). Oh, I also put in a 3x larger culvert where the main ditch goes under the barn driveway, and a second culvert where it goes under the kennel driveway.

All with just a shovel. And I am by no means a fit or athletic person, I am middle-aged and arthritic and have an unreliable back and, quite frankly, rather low motivation level for physical exercise   If I can do it, any reasonably able-bodied person can!!

It is EVER so much drier here now. Seriously. Way. 

Also, I have learned one very important lesson that I'd never suspected til I came to own a wet property. *Water goes much, much faster thru drainage ditches if they are scalped bare rather than grassy or weedy*.  A huge amount faster. You wouldn't believe. I'm professionally an aquatic biologist, have dealt with countless temporary ponds and swamps, and i have been ASTOUNDED by how much difference it makes to simply keep the ditches really, really clean with a weedwhacker. 

(If you get behind and discover they're flooded with grass impeding flow, you can weedwhack despite about 2" of water but in deeper water I highly recommend long-handled manual edging shears, the ones that look like big scissors on tall handles, which can be used in any depth of water. These have saved my butt several times, although they are good exercise )

None of this will help people whose flooding is from rivers overflowing their banks of course, but for most other situations, I am not kidding, it is AMAZING how much improvement can be made with time, shovel, and weedwhacker 

Pat


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## goodhors (Apr 29, 2011)

Well, we didn't have 8 years to work with flooding.  Animals getting wet, standing in wet ALL day long, feed and bedding getting spoiled, made for an intolerable situation here.  Along with working full time for both husband and I, there WERE no more hours in the days!!

Horses are by their nature RECREATIONAL, so when the days are nice you want to use them.  Can't do that if they have gotten sick, developed leg or foot issues from standing in wet for days.  And sometimes the rain and wet here go on for WEEKS.  

We plan our projects for our limited time off, want any job done well and QUICKLY.  Dragging it out for years is way too mind-boggling a concept to consider.  Just "putting up with it" while we putter away with a shovel for YEARS is not part of our way of managing situations.

You save up for cost of the job.  We plan out the changes we want done, have costs of renting machine in hand when we call for it to be delivered.  We have purchased rocks, tubing, joiners, fabric and anything else needed is on hand when you start any job.

Again, machine can manage MUCH more weight in moving things, digging neatly, QUICKLY, than ANYONE working by hand.  That is why machines are invented.  In-shape, out-of-shape, any person can drive the machine to do the work to fix poor situations on the farm.  You don't have to worry about  hurting your bad back again, small body, poor knees, being tired out, when you have the machine doing the hard parts FOR YOU.

The barn that came with the property is on the lower part of the farm drainage system.  It COLLECTED water until we tiled around it.  Totally unhealthy for any animals to be living in such a wet spot.  Pumps were useless when the water is running in faster than they could remove it.  

With this kind of situation that appeared in the high water table years, you have to really modify the surrounding area.  And since you have several high water table years in a row, the modifications needed to be done quickly.

If you don't have any money, I guess you are stuck with shovel work.  Probably will give you great PERSONAL satisfaction to know all the changes were touched by you.  Can be fun to play in the mud, watch water running away, like a beach visit.  

We just didn't have that kind of free time, unwiling to work that hard when there are other, easier (on our bodies), FASTER solutions to the water problem.  I would rather work hard one weekend, fix my water issues and go out riding those horses all the other weekends of the year.  You can work yourself to death picking away at stuff on farms, or you can take bigger measures and get things over, done with quickly.  Your choice.


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## Bossroo (Apr 29, 2011)

We have only 10 inches of annual rainfall in our area. We also have a dry creek 30' wide and 10 ' deep running through our poperty cutting off 2 acres for our house site.However we also have a hard pan on the surface or to just inches below it. So, the area is prone to flash floods.  After a winter hard rain for 2 days that may be a total of under 1inch, the creek rises about a foot an hour untill it overlows it's banks. Then the water  drops at about the same rate untill there is only a trickle and is bone dry within a week. I hired 3 D9s with land planes to deep rip then level and grade my 19.5 acres, and raise the house site by 3 feet then compact the newly raised soil at the house site , then a ditch witch to trench around and away from the barn site and house site leading to a drain ditch, installed 6" perforated plastic drain pipe and backfilled with rock. I also raise the creek sides by 3feet.  Then built our house and barn.  No flooding problems at all. It  REALY helps to plan for a 100 year flood event ahead of time !


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## dianneS (Apr 29, 2011)

I too can feel your pain.  Our house floods before our barn though.  We just had ten feet in our house from the basement up.  The main floor of our house was flooded and everything in the basement destroyed.  Our furnace and all appliances need replaced as well as our electrical system and a lot of our plumbing.  On the bright side, the water hasn't been this high in 40 years, so hopefully it will be 40 more before it happens again!

Our animals were moved to higher ground but the barn did get a foot of water and so did the chicken house.  The chickens were moved to the hay loft.

I'm still working on drying out and the ground water is still running into the basement.  Its really a pain, but we'll get through. 

 So sorry you're going through this, I know its rough but you'll get there.  At times you feel so overwhelmed you just feel like you're going in circles.

I really hope this is the end of the crazy weather for a while!


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