Blessed Rain

tobee,
Clay and Shale?...hmmm...sound like my front yard...grrr!!! I use the Granny Grit (aka Turkey Grit etc. - very small gravel) beneath everything all my C & S planted in that awful soil. My cactus patch is in it's infant stages. I have a couple different types of Agave & Yucca out there...realizing now that some of the ones that I have more then 2 of might have to be donated to someone at some point. It's very nice they're thriving but...I've got a bit of cacti pads ready to go in...plus some cholla. That agave of your's is simply beautiful...I'm very impressed. Tell me please, are the lighter ones more sun sensitive?

Hart,
"Cacti Anonymous 12 step program?" Surely you jest?!! LOL I've been begging for someone to sponsor me for months now...no one's up to the challenge...but I've met a lot of enablers out west willing to donate to the cause...LOL

I'm working on the perennial 12 step program. It's a dismal failure. LOL

I'm no expert but it is possible to reroute all that runoff or do other work with the landscape to make it so you're not treading water every time it rains, Tobee. Lord knows what it costs. Guess that depends on how much has to be done.

Chantell & Tobee, Thanx for the warm welcome. Today we're having a family cook-out & I've got to get stuff ready. It's gonna be a scorcher (more watering!). Have a HAPPY 4th! and ENJOY!

happy 14th to all!


well dale, thankfully we don't have this problem every time it rains. i would say just when the rain goes into serious "flood" levels. if you can believe it is STILL running. yesterday dh ran that sub pump for hours and when i got up this morning the water is still running a moat around the pool. today we are expecting more showers...just what we need! what i think is more the problem is that after tennessee gas line ran there new gas line it diverted the water and the drain system the town has can't handle the new water that has been diverted to it. there are drain catchers in the street which are running as well and since we know all the water is coming from that area, they must be part of the problem.

i supposed we can look at it as an exchange of expense. i would rather put the money into the diversion that i would re-doing a water damaged house! my hd was reviewing the info last evening. i haven't heard his comments as yet. we also have a close friend that is an engineer and i will be discussing it with him to see what he thinks. but i think it's a starting point. so once again thank you so much.

chantell, actually no, the whiter agave need just as much sun as others.

i am far beyond any 12 step program to quit collecting any type of plants. as by profession as a plantscaper and designer for two landscapers and a container business specializing in integration of tropical design into northern landscapes.(what a mouth full!) i was lost years ago. attempting to collect every cultivar of most species known and unknown to mankind! many which i have store over the winter months and is no fun whatsoever.

Ah, you're in a town. Do you perhaps not have any curbs on the roads in your neighborhood and the ones uphill from you? That can make big difference.

I'm sure some of your neighbors have the same problem. Squeaky wheels - band together and go to the town government and ask for a solution. The smart thing would be to do it now, while everyone is mad about the water, and again when the town is working on its budget for the next fiscal year. Because I can just about guarantee there's no money in there to fix this problem now.

I don't know how often this happens but it might help to know sometimes when the flood conditions are bad enough it's just going to flood and nobody - the homeowners, the local government and the taxpayers - wants to spend the money to upgrade to handle, say, a 500 year storm. (A 500 year storm is one so bad that it would only happen once every 500 years. It's kind of a meaningless term since you can have one every year if it rains enough or there are a lot of hurricanes.) But I'm assuming this is something that wasn't happening before so it can be fixed.

tobee,
Because I am the very kind hearted (& humble I may add) individual that I am...I will offer my home to any "extras" you have of Cactus or Succulents...heck I'm open to any plant I don't already have...LOL. I'm just nice like that! ROTFL

good morning...and i meant the 4th!! never could type and i usually have so many typo's it's almost NOT worth correcting them!

hart,

no, no...i'm NOT in a town. we really don't have any "towns" here. (although, i'm sure that is sounding odd because i'm in new jersey. i am situated near the delaware water gap where ny, pa and nj meet. the closes town is about 25 minutes away in two directions. in the one direction. north is...or was port jervis ny....which is totally flooded out. the other direction is west and that area although flooded was far less effected since there are no rivers in that immediate area. i am in a township which is quite large and although many streets are not paved and without township curbs or drains, our area is paved and has township drains. and apparently, because we sit in a "gully" in the mountains in our neighborhood, we are really the only home that is so affected by the runoff none of the other neighbors has the problem and why would they, we have all the water that runs through their properties.

chantell...i hear you!! i really do love agave and some succulents! i do incorporate some into my landscapes. in my personal gardens i have an area which has a center point of an agave witch has over a 5 feet span.

No matter whether it's a town or a township, you do have a local government that's responsible for things like stormwater management and zoning enforcement.

Curbs among other things help direct the flow of stormwater. Maybe you've already tried this but if I were you, I'd talk to the township engineer, the planning director or whoever is in charge of zoning enforcement and your local representative on the township government. Either you're in a very old neighborhood that was developed before zoning laws were put into place there or someone has violated a zoning ordinance.

Among other things, zoning laws require that, for example, the properties at the top of the hill not have all their normal (not flood stage) stormwater runoff dumping onto another property.

FIVE FEET?!?!! OMG....yeah, definately gonna have to pull some up at some point and donate them to someone who'd like one. Please tell me they grow S-L-O-W. LOL

good morning,

ahhhhhh hart...a person that thinks exactly the same as me. i thought immediately about going to the township. my husband is extremely concerned that they may try and condemn our septic or someother horrible thing. that is the type of person's we have around here. somehow they will find us at fault.......then here comes another battle! he did call last flood about the town drain system and they came out and said it was fine and we just had a lot of rain...but did absolutely nothing about it. so once again that is what we are dealing with here.

there is one house above us that put some type of drain in, you can tell because water is now running down her driveway into the street. we have notice this the past two, three years.

chantell, some grow extremely slow while others are very fast. it just depends on the cultivar..;)

oh...hart, i have to ask you...do you know any laws in reference to stormwater management and zoning enforcement?????


"Among other things, zoning laws require that, for example, the properties at the top of the hill not have all their normal (not flood stage) stormwater runoff dumping onto another property"

now IF i can find that somewhere???????

and thanks so much for all your help..again!

Go to your local library and ask to see a copy of the township's zoning ordinances. I can tell you what's common here but those laws vary from place to place.

There's also the national standards for construction, the BOCA codes. I'm sure there would be some standards for stormwater management in there.

When was your house built and the other houses in your neighborhood? If they were built prior to your locality adopting a zoning code, they would be grandfathered.

hart....this area was built in approx 1975-1976. i know there were zoning codes at the time, however, i'm certain they have changed substantially by now. it has appeared in the past that the township will "grandfather" what they chose to fit their own needs...leaving us out in the cold...or wet to better put it. also, it appears as the water tables have either changed or something is just not right anymore. we have lived here almost thirty years and only in the past 3 has the water flown directly in front of our house like this.

i will go to the library and check it out and see if that will be of any help to us. all i know is we are still pumping the water!

If something was done before a law was put into place, they have to grandfather it. They don't have any choice. You can't make a law retroactive.

There are a lot of factors that could be causing the change in the stormwater flow - construction uphill or erosion changing the flow, streambeds that did handle the flow getting filled with brush or even trash or just larger than normal amounts of rain.

Keep in mind stormwater systems are designed to handle a certain amount of rain - normal runoff or a 100 year storm or a 500 year storm and so on. If your house was built that long ago, I doubt if the laws in place at the time required that it handle larger storms or larger amounts of water built up into the soil over weeks.

For example, in 1995 we had had a very wet winter followed by a very wet spring and early summer. When the rains from a hurricane hit, the ground was saturated. There was nowhere for the runoff to go so we had flooding and even sewer backups in lots of neighborhoods that hadn't flooded before, especially the older neighborhoods that had inadequate stormwater systems or, as I mentioned before, where builders had hooked homes' stormwater systems into the public sewer system.

What usually happens is that those older systems muddle along until you get a year or a couple of years with a lot of rain. Then everybody floods and there's enough public outcry for the local government to put public money into improving the systems. Until it gets bad, even the people in those neighborhoods are usually not willing to see their taxes raised to pay for the improvements.

Have you considered hiring an engineer, one who would be familiar with the stormwater codes current and past but more importantly would be able to look at the stormwater flow and figure out where the problem is?

hart...better than hiring an engineer, i'm having one over for dinner. we hired the firm when tennessee gas came in and it was their plan (the firm ) i hired that drew up the plans by the leach fields to prevent the water from backing up. that's working fine...we had (TG) no septic back up with the rain. however, i think when the pipeline came in they must have hit something...they were working in the street near the drains and dug up the entire area including the pavement. it was only after the pipeline that these water problems happened.

the other choice is to call the attorney that handled the gasline for us and tell him that what they may have done has began other problems. i know the neighbor next to us is getting tons of water because after it goes through us..it goes to them, but away from their home. they have mentioned to us that since the pipeline put that large drain on our property that they are getting more water. the problem here, is no one wants to utter a word. but i'm going to the library as you suggested and see what i can find...and also talk to our friend about it because he knows all the local laws. i called his wife this morning to come for dinner over the weekend IF we can stop the water by then!

edited for all my t ypo's!



This message was edited Jul 6, 2006 1:46 PM