Waterlogged Garage
 

The last few weeks it's been nice and cold, but today it's warmed up to a big 2, and the roads are a mess and my garage looks like a very disgustingly dirty swimming pool.

I've been in and out a lot today, and I've been brushing off the majority of the slushy gunk from the wheel arches on the road before I drive in to the garage but there is still a lot of water, and I can't think what to do with it.

I can't brush it out as it will freeze on the drive, it's already back in the minus figures outside.

I was thinking of perhaps getting one of those wet and dry vacs off ebay or something, just to suck up the filthy water, but I can't be the only one having this problem, what does everyone else do?

I am mainly concerned that everyone is walking into the house from the garage with muddy feet, and the carpets are a pale colour of course, but also that the water will start to run out of the garage as we drive in and out, making the drive like a skating rink.

I've just put down some of the moving boxes we have left, in the hopes that they will soak up some of the water.

Any other suggestions?

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

havent a clue about the garage but in the house dont you do the canadian thing and take your shoes off at the door, and put them on a boot tray?

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I've just come in from sweeping out the garage when I saw your post!

Yep the roads are disgusting today - black mush everywhere. I just brush out what I can and then use a long squigee to push the remainder out. I then tend to use the snow scraper to scrap the frozen yuck from off the drive when I finish. All ready to repeat in the morning when tonights yuck has fallen off the car and dissolved on the floor! :)

There's got to be a better way - I agree - a shop vac that sucks up water would be a good option. Maybe I'll add it to the Christmas list... romantic huh? :blink:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I'm awaiting sensible replies also !

Our garage is already a gritty, filthy, soggy mess - and we've not really had that much snow.

We have a wardrobe sitting in there also at the moment, and that is currently surrounded by piles of old sofa covers to try and absorb the c**p from the wheels of my car - I suspect the wardrobe might not last too long anyway after a winter in the garage, but I've got to try :blink:

I think my kids would go for the skating-rink-drive option :lol:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

The door from the garage leads directly into the dining room, and is right next to the bathroom door, and the door to the basement, so it's a bit awkward to have anything there at all, I've got a rug down there now, and the kids walk along that and then take off their boots in the hall.

I might have to get them to get out on the drive and walk around the back of the house and come in through the laundry room.

The garage opened onto the laundry room in our old house, and that made much more sense, I am glad I am renting and do not own this house :D

Mine probably would too, but it's on a bit of a slope and I can just imagine being sued by the post man or whizzing down it in the car and smashing into the car over the road, that is usually how things go isn't it ;-)

Ladymoose, I think shop vac is going to be high on my Christmas list too!!

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Quote by SnorkMaiden,
"WaterLogged Garage."
"but also that the water will start to run out of the garage".
.................................................. ...............................


Hi there,
If the water level becomes a SERIOUS problem you'll have to change your Title to "Snorkel" Maiden!!;)

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

44 years of experience says garages are for cars an' tools an' stuff not furniture. :p;):)

Seriously now, can you put the wardrobe on a couple of 2"x4"s to keep it out of the water. We have a detached garage and if we do have to put anything of importance out there we always try to keep it up off the floor by a couple of inches.

There is virtually nothing that can be done to keep the floor dry other than to keep scraping, sweeping or squeegeeing at every opportunity.

Cheers
Steve

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

:lol:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

To some extent it's something you live with through the winter. Then, when spring arrives and the snow has finally gone (or when you think it has finally gone), you sweep our your garage, hose the garage floor, etc.

It's not only an issue of the snow that you will have tracked into your garage and that will have melted to form mud. It also will be an issue of the sand / fine stones that you will have tracked into your garage over the course of the winter.

This is one of the reasons for having generously sized doormats at each door and for taking off your outdoor footwear when you enter the house. It also explains why many Canadian houses have mud rooms. A mud room is a room at the back entrance of the house that has a linoleum floor. It sometimes is combined with a laundry.

We have built-in wooden cupboards along one wall of our garage, the wall that the garage shares in common with the interior of the house. The wooden cupboards reach from the floor to the ceiling. The first winter that we were in this house we noticed that the water accumulated on the garage floor. This meant that the fronts of those wooden cupboards were standing in an inch or so of water. We knew this eventually would result in the wood rotting. My husband made a couple of shallow, U-shaped "dams" to contain the water and keep it away from the cupboards. This solution has been effective, in the sense that it has kept the water away from the cupboards, and the cupboards have remained dry.

The way my husband made the dams was to glue long, thin strips of wood onto the garage floor. There are two sets that consist of three strips each. In each case, the three strips describe a U shape on the garage floor. The open end of the U faces the driveway, and it allows us to drive into the garage and park the vehicle.

Imagine a parking spot in an outdoor parking area, say at your local supermarket. You can tell where you're supposed to park by the three sides of a rectangle that are indicated by yellow lines. The edge of the imaginary rectangle across which you drive has no line. But, once your vehicle is parked, it has three yellow lines around it -- one in front of the vehicle, running at right angles to the length of the vehicle, and two lines running parallel to the length of the vehicle, on either side of the vehicle.

Now imagine that you took long, thin strips of wood and glued them on top of those yellow lines. You would end up with strips of wood outlining a large letter U in the parking lot, and your vehicle would be parked inside the boundaries of that U.

That's what our garage floor looks like, except that it has two U-shaped "dams" like that, and they are separated from each other by some distance.

My husband figured out where to place the U-shaped "dams" by parking the vehicles in the optimum spots, and then placing the strips of wood at suitable distances from the edges of the vehicles.

Don't know if I'm making any sense.

I suppose you could buy a wet/dry vac, but I bet it would be a nuisance to haul it out and clean the garage floor on a regular basis, to say nothing of the financial investment that would be required.

My husband's low tech solution, combined with doormats before and after we enter the house from the garage (admittedly also combined with a mud room / laundry room that we walk through before we reach the carpeted hallway) does the trick for us.

Just read the responses that have been posted while I've been typing this. The additional information makes a lot of my suggestions useless for snorkmaiden, but they still may be helpful for someone else.

I like Steve's suggestions of raising cupboards off the ground slightly, if they are the free-standing kind.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Actually, I think I may be able to adapt your husbands dam idea for our garage.

Along the floor at the end nearest the house, there is a strip of carpet, which has become waterlogged, but if I can dam before the carpet, I can dry that out, and the kids can remove their boots there and then carry them into the laundry room.

I feel a trip to Rona coming on :D

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Karma on it's way to you for that one :D

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Id say brush all the water onto your drive as best you can then put as much of that ice melter stuff down as you can.

You can buy it in huge bags in Wallmart and Superstore and we used a ton of it last year on our drive in Calgary, worked a treat.

Good luck mrs minihaha x

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Do you not have drain in your garage??

Both houses we have lived had a drain, maybe you haven't found yours yet? You know one of those discoveries that one makes when living in a new house 'Oh so that's what that is!:blink:'

I'm sure you haven't got a drain if your posting about this. I know your not stoopid.

Just as a thought....... As you all know my hubby is a little fanatical about cars, one thing he does like to do is keep his cars sparkly clean, (he finds polishing relaxing) well the 1st winter here we had a warmer day (+1 or so was the high), so he cleaned one car on the drive, alls well, then got out the other and cleaned that, the night fell the drive froze and we couldn't stand up on it for the rest of the winter. Now the cars get dirty and it really bugs him.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Nope, that would be perfect though, we've been talking about it and I wondered if some garages would have them.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Garages do have them (I had one at my last place) but they apparently don't allow the installation of drains into garages now, something to do with the oil and other pollutants going down them and into the land. Not sure if this is a provincial code thing but definitely something I heard in passing earlier this year.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I would invest in a few sacks of the cheapest cat litter available.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Mop and bucket.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Thats a shame i was just thinking about a drain being built in:unsure:
we have had several floods over the years and have a big wet vac thing its great, athough i am not sure how it would handle all the grit and sand,



Sounds like theres a whole in the market for some bright spark:D
what about a pond vac would that work, that sucks up all sorts of muck and water ? just a thought :huh:



cheers sue

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I have a drain in one garage but not in the other. We do keep wooden stuff off the floor and I make with the big squeegy thing to keep the water off. The garage with the drain of course has it at the highest point in the floor it seems!:frown:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Salt. Lots of it. My car lives in our garage now that we only need 1 car for commuting (working for the same company is awesome), so we're using the SUV in the winter and will use my tiny thing in the spring/summer. For some stupid reason, when the house builders put the guttering up they directed the downspout onto the driveway, right next to where the driver's door is...now that's clever. Every time there's a thaw then a freeze, we had a skating rink on the driveway. We used about a bag of salt every 2 days last winter (we moved in in January). This year we wised up and bought a flexible extension, so we're redirecting the water into a flower bed.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

This thread is completely lost on me. I've lived in a variety of Canadian houses without having any sort of garage flooding problem, surely proper grading should prevent that.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Ah! The common man speaks common sense.

I have a garage...with a drain...at the lowest point of the grading. If I ever put a car in it I'm sure I wouldn't have a problem with snow melt.

If I could be arsed to make room for a car I could try an experiment to make sure.

Oh, one more thing. The garage is (as I think is normal) unheated. Why would snow melt in there in the first place?

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I can only assume we don't have proper grading. But if we did, it would all be running down the drive, which is sloped.

I think the garage is warmer, being integral, than it is outside by some way, however, the snow sticks to the car in huge amounts, and then slides off, or drips off. There is no drain, and the floor looks as flat as a pancake.

Even when I clear all I can out of the arches, the amount of almost black, thick, goopy, slushy crap, under the car that I can't get at, must be enough to leave the huge puddles :)

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Why do you put the car in the garage? Are you short of bicycles, skis, lawnmowers, barbecues and similar garage stuff?

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Perhaps snorkmaiden like myself is one of the few people left in the world who believe that a garage is for cars. :p

Other stuff can be stored in there but not at the expense of its prime purpose.

Call me old fashioned but I didn't buy a house with a garage so I could park my vehicles on the street. :p;)

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

A rare breed, we have a triple garage and couldn't get a car in there :eek:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I'm with you on that :thumbup:

Besides it's no fun for OH digging the car out from the nights snowfall at 5.45 am in -25 !!!

I do spoil him.....:p

Linda

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
nice one

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I'm trying hard to think of any garage near me that is used to house a car, even the ones that aren't stuffed with crap. I don't think mine has ever had a car in it.

At least one of my neighbours has converted the garage to another room.

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

We never put the car in the UK garage, it was a utility/store room, not to mention where the treadmill ( I mean close horse:p) lived....no room for car there!!!

Most of my neighbours here seem to garage their cars.

I would love to have a triple garage though.....can never have too much storage room!!!

Linda

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Totally agree all the stuff you can get in there is amasing, :thumbsup:
not looking forward to clearing it out to move, its all essential you understand :rofl:

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

I was dreading clearing things out......I can always find a reason to keep things, we might need this if......

When I actually started the big sort out, I found I actually enjoyed it :huh:.....very invigorating, it felt like a fresh start!!!!

Linda

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Linda I can't believe the amount of stuff we have, both in the garage and the house, trouble is i can find an excuse to keep it all :D did you take much with you, sue

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Yep, my garage is for the car. Plus, my car (grand voyager) is ten years old, but has lived all of it's life in Texas, so it's pretty rust free, and I want to keep it going as long as possible, so it's needs lots of tlc :D

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

A man who thinks just like my hubby, which is why my basement has been stuffed full of assorted garden furniture - good job we don't use the basement as the main family room!

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

OMG You've just sent shivers down my spine.............. the garage will have to be cleared:eek:. Ours is more a concrete shed thats garaage size and christ knows what OH has in there.

<got to have a vodka now due to the stress of remembering the outside room>

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

just went out to make a start for the tip, :ohmy: locked the door came back in toooooo scarry :rofl: start tomorrow :D

sue

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Is that the tomorrow that doesn't come ;):o

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

Well I thought I had given away, sold or binned just about all our worldly possessions, but we still had 130 items shipped across.

We brought our lovely kitchen table and chairs, which is solid rubber wood and it's not a happy bunny at all.......the dryness here is ruining it...keeps splitting:(

Linda

Re: Waterlogged Garage
 

:embaressed_smile::wink_smile: maybe