hello my name is Mark Waldman I'm president of Waldman engineering and I wanted to talk to you today about drainage issues that could lead to basement flooding especially in the springtime of the year when we have frozen ground conditions coupled with heavy rainfall or snowmelt about 40 years ago we started to incorporate a technique where a drain tile system was installed around the perimeter of basement foundations terminating in a sump pit in the basement or crawlspace where a mechanical pump was used to evacuate and discharge the water into a drainage Swale or discharge storm sewer the problem however is that in these later days of winter if the discharge pipe outside has a frozen plug in it when the pump is activated by these heavy rainfalls or snow melts the the pump will not be able to evacuate the pit and the basement or crawlspace will flood and the pump will mechanically fail moreover many people have battery backup systems that they leave unmaintained and the batteries are not charged or the pump is defective so even when the battery backup is called on to work it will fail as well and half an inch of water in your basement is just as bad as three feet of water so any nominal amount of flooding can be hazard so the solution is simply to inspect these systems to make sure the discharge end of the pipe is clear and free-flowing this time of year and that if you have a battery backup pump that its battery is fully charged and the pump is operational additionally use will make sure that the gutters and downspouts are cleaning around the perimeter of the house and that any overland flow away from the foundation if you do these things you can avert many of the problems of the springtime basement flooding I hope that helps have a good day