We just had a bad flood in our fully furnished basement.
We purchased this refurbished home a year and a half ago. We were told the house was NOT flooded. We were told we did NOT LIVE IN A FLOOD ZONE.

Since the last storm we have been battling a flooded basement for five days.

After taking up the carpet and mat under the carpet we see that the previous owner was clearly doing a fast job renovating the house. The floor is cracking and less than an inch thick.

Would we have case against this previous owner? How can we find out if there was any flooding when the lived there?

There was also no sub pump in the basement. I guess this is partly our fault.

Thanks

Who told you it was not in a flood zone? Did your insurance company offer you flood insurance?

Only the government provides flood insurance. If you are in a flood zone, I believe you are required to have flood insurance with your mortgage.

Go here if you are in New Jersey and want to see if you are in a flood zone..

http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/static/landing1.jsp?WT.mc_id=FEMA_Google1&WT.srch=1

When I ordered flood insurance for my current home, they game me a complete record of the floods in the sounding area. This is probably a report you can get from the governement agency that controls the flood insurance.

I know it seems like harsh advice now, but I get flood insurance on my house even though I am no where near a flood zone.

You just never know what's going to happen.

You don't have to live in a flood zone to get flooded by an early spring storm.

The previous owners may never have had a flooded basement, but with the ground already saturated from the melting snow and the torrential rains of the last storm, there was likely too much water with no place to go, so it went into your basement.

I live on the side of a hill, well above the river with no chance that the river will rise so high as to pose a threat, but if the snow melts too rapidly or if there is a lot of rain and the ground is frozen, I will have an indoor swimming pool. In 16 years here, this has happened maybe four times. The first time it happened, we did not have a sump pump. That one experience taught us to have one set up to turn on automatically once the water gets high enough to pose a threat to the boiler.

Visit http://www.floodsmart.gov/floodsmart/pages/faq_zones.jsp for information from the Federal Govt about flood zones and insurance.

That storm which just hit the New England area was not normal. It was what the forecasters call a "hundred-year rain" - it happens on the average once every 100 years.

There are several questions you need to ask before determining what to do:

1. How did the water get in the basement?
- If the sewers backed up or the streets flooded, the government agency that provides the sewers is liable.
- If the water came in through cracks, it means the water table was high. If you are not in a valley, this could have been totally due to the abnormal storm.
- Did water overtop the window wells and come in the basement windows? This is probably due to the abnormal storm.
- Did water overtop the basement wall and enter the house where the construction changes to wood? This is definitely due to the abnormal storm, as nothing that does this normally would have been allowed to be built.
- Did the water come through perforations made in the wall to install utilities?
If so, the installer is at fault.
- Did water come in through plugs installed by termite men?

2. Was a way provided for water to leave the basement?
- Was it working?
- Was the water inflow too great for it?
- Is there a tile drainage system around the house exterior? Is it working?
- Are the sewers higher than the basement floor?

3. How much water accumulated in the basement?
- If it was several feet deep, did it rise to that level and stay there, did it go down by itself after the storm left the area, or was the inflow too much for a drain?
- Would a sump pump and a floor drain take care of the problem? This is a cheap and easy fix.

I can tell you a few stories about flooded basements:

- In one house I lived in, the basement never flooded, until after there was a minor earthquake in the area. This created tiny cracks in the concrete-block wall. This was made worse by the termite men, who drilled holes in the floor and patched them, but the patches seeped water.

- In another house, a contractor using a backhoe to replace a burst water main crushed the tile foundation drain leading from the house to a lower area of the yard. The basement then started flooding every time it rained.

- In one neighbor's house, the concrete-block basement walls seeped water every time it rained (after the same earthquake). The owner built a little dike around the rim of the basement, with the end leading into a sump pump.

- Another neighbor had the water come in through a condensate drain for the furnace. The sewer backed up from too much water, and the inlet for that (6 feet off the basement floor) was the lowest drain in the house.

- Probably the best house for this that I lived in was one where the basement slab was above ground on one side of the house. We thought it would never flood. But the garage door for a basement garage was on the west side. A heavy driving rain with high winds forced water under the garage door.