Basement Flooding Cleanup in Blaine, MN
The rain started Thursday night and did not quit until Saturday. The sump pump kept up the whole time, and the basement still took water, because it came in at the bottom of the block wall behind the shelving and up through the crack by the floor drain. The carpet in the family room is dark from wall to wall. This site puts you through by phone to an independent local provider who handles basement flooding cleanup in Blaine and across Anoka County.
Finding where the water entered a sand-plain basement
A pump only handles the water that reaches the pit. The crew's first job is to find the paths that bypassed it: a window well that filled, a mortar joint in the block, a cold joint where the slab meets the footing, or a crack under the carpet nobody knew about. They pump out standing water, pull back the carpet, and meter the base of every wall in every room, because water that came in at one corner of a Blaine basement runs along the footing to the far side.
The sand under Blaine lets rain through fast and holds it a few feet down. After a wet week the water table can sit right at the footing, and pressure alone pushes it through the block. That is why a basement that has been dry for ten years floods in the one spring the ground never got a chance to drain.
Breaker off, boxes up, camera out
Kill the breaker for the basement if the panel is reachable without stepping in water. Move boxes, rugs, and anything with legs up onto the stairs or the driveway. Photograph every wall, the carpet, the window wells, and the water line on the boxes. Do not pull the carpet or cut the paneling yourself; the crew wants to see where the water line was. If the water is still rising and the pump is running, leave the pump alone. Then call.
What leaves the basement and what stays
Carpet pad comes out; carpet often dries once the pad is gone. Drywall that reads wet in the bottom foot gets cut at a clean line and the insulation behind it leaves, because wet fiberglass holds water against the studs. Paneling glued to block usually comes off so the wall can breathe. Block and poured walls dry in place with air moving across them. Framing dries in place if it is reached within days. After the wet material is out, structural drying runs until the numbers say the slab and the walls are done.
If the pit overflowed on top of the seepage, the pump gets looked at as part of the job, and that side of it is a sump pump failure cleanup. If the water came up the floor drain instead of the walls, tell the person who answers, because that is a sewer backup cleanup and the crew arrives with different gear.
Blaine basements, Coon Creek ditches, and the wet spring of 2014
The ramblers built in Blaine between 1955 and 1975 have block walls and full basements dug into wet sand, and many were finished later with paneling and carpet glued to the slab. The Coon Creek Watershed District's 135 miles of ditches carry the runoff toward the Mississippi, and the city's 700 stormwater ponds hold what the ditches cannot. In June 2014 all of it was full. Blaine measured 4.07 inches on June 19 alone, at the end of the wettest month on record in the Twin Cities, and basements across the north metro that had never leaked took water through the walls.
Spring is the other season. The snowpack goes out over a warm week in late March or April, the ground is still frozen a foot down, and the melt has nowhere to go but sideways into the footing.
Groundwater that seeps through a wall or rises through a slab is often excluded by homeowner policies unless you carry a water backup or sump endorsement. This site cannot say what yours covers. Ask the crew to log the entry points, the readings, and the photos from the first visit so your adjuster has the whole picture.
Call about the water in the basement
Say how deep the water is, where it seems to be coming in, and whether the sump pump is running. Mention if the carpet is glued down and whether the basement is finished. Call (763) 297-2728.
