Last weekend my garage floor drain almost flooded everything

I've got a 2 car garage setup where I work on my old Triumph motorcycle, and last Saturday I noticed water creeping in from the floor drain after a heavy rain. Turns out the previous owner had buried the drain pipe under a concrete patch without any slope, and it was completely clogged with 15 years of sludge. I spent 7 hours with a shop vac and a drain snake to clear it out, and I still had to bust up a 2 foot section of concrete to fix the pipe. Now I'm paranoid every time it rains, and I'm thinking about installing a drainage trench along the whole garage door. Has anyone else dealt with hidden drain problems in their garage that came back to bite them?

2 comments

2 Comments

joelthomas1mo ago

Hold up, did you check if that drain is actually tied into the city storm sewer or just dumping into the ground next to your foundation? Because that changes EVERYTHING about how you fix it. If it's just a drywell underneath your garage slab, busting up concrete and re-sloping might not even matter long term. The real question is where does that water actually GO after it leaves your garage?

tara_palmer1mo ago

Not necessarily, because if it's just a drywell under the slab the water still has to drain somewhere and if that drywell is saturated or clogged you're back to square one no matter where it dumps. Busting up the concrete and regrading might actually fix the root problem by giving the water a proper outlet instead of relying on a poorly maintained pit. You're assuming the drywell is the issue but sometimes the real fix is just getting the water to move away from the foundation in the first place.