I know we haven't had rain in a year, but when we have rain, it floods my garage.

I have a lot working against me and I have tried a bunch of different things, but nothing seems to work. I was hoping the THF might give me some ideas that I could use to help keep water out of my garage.


My garage use to be a carport. We turned it into a garage. The concrete slopes to the back and to the sides in the garage. I don't know if this is by design because it was a carport. When we turned it into a garage, I had a concrete guy cut off the part of the foundation that is in front of the garage doors and redo it with a slope away from the garage doors. It probably only drops an inch in about 18 inches. From there the driveway slopes upwards. Probably 2-3 feet over about 10 yards. The driveway is gravel/road base. All the water seems to drain down the driveway towards the garage and then overflows the 1" slope and floods the garage.

I have tried to dig a small trench in front of the concrete, but it always fills in with road base from our driveway. I have tried different weather stripping under the garage doors. I have even built dirt dams in front of the garage doors when it rains.

It seems like the best thing to do would be to try to slope the driveway away from the garage. That just doesn't seem reasonable without totally redoing the driveway and front yard.

What other ideas to you guys have? I am tired of getting mud in my garage.

This is the only way to go. Put it on as many sides as needed as long as you can pipe it away from the building.
Ideally, you would have poured a cap on the carport to raise it prior to the remodel.

https://www.trenchdrainsupply.com/?...XZquNCTLCaUEmMIecF1GCyOrZUxoCJjMQAvD_BwE

You can get this much cheaper from a wholesale plumbing supply outfit.....just make sure to request traffic rated grates.

I was going to suggest a french drain of sorts but having road base uphill would make it difficult unless you kept the french drain cleaned out frequently. ... maybe making mini terraces up the road base drive to divert the water in several locations before the concrete portion instead of it all draining to the concrete. I suspect over time those would also fill in as well though.

This ^^^^

Add Gutters over the doors this will move a lot of water away also.

The roof slopes to the sides. Do you mean add gutters to the wall above the door? Water that runs down the doors tends to go into the garage.

Dig a few holes that a 55 gallon drum can drop into and drop in a few drums filled with large rocks. Plumb the base to each other with 2" or larger pipe. Put a sump pump in the center drum and run a line from it to wherever you want the water to go. I've had to do this before when there was a power line and sewer easement running through the yard that prevented me from running regular drain pipes.

My ground is solid rock. I would have to use dynamite to dig a hole big enough for a 55 gallon drum. I use a pickaxe to put in T-posts.

I thought about having another concrete slab with the correct slope poured on top of my current slab. I am sure there are problems with that that I don't see. I would assume it would need to be a couple of inches thick. My truck clears the door with about 1 1/2 inches to spare.

I had a house with a similar layout to yours. The driveway sloped downward toward the garage. Some time before I bought it a sump pump had been installed to collect and pump water up and away from the garage. It worked. The only problem I had was caused one year by my ignorance. I didn't check the sump regularly and it filled with leaves. It rained, and the pump float ended up on top of the leaves preventing the pump from turning off, and it burned up. A new pump and more attention fixed that, and life was good again.

It would be cheaper to have someone with a wheel trencher come trench it across the driveway and away from the structure. Then use the trench drains I mentioned above and pipe to move the water from A to B.