Help, Barn on low land, rain hard, it floods

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Does anyone have any suggestions that I can do for this problem, I have a small barn, I want to put animals in. It sits on low land, all other land around it higher. When it rains real hard, water just pours into barn door. and even if it rains steady for one week, the dirt floor on barn is very damp and wet. It has a treated wood foundation just built from ground level up and metal sheeting for siding. Any suggestions would be wonderful. Thanks

-- Barbara (vozarbi@sensible-net.com), September 29, 2001

Answers

I take it the barn can't be moved. So - can you dig a small trench with a shovel around the side that floods to re-route the rain water? Dig it a ways out from the barn not right up against it. You wouldn't have to dig very deep - maybe half the depth of the shovel blade and only a couple inches wide. We do this when we go camping in a tent and alot of rain is coming. Always has worked.

-- Pat (mikulptrc@aol.com), September 29, 2001.

We have this problem and it's the pits! I just hate a barn with soggy (& in some areas standing water) floors! Here's what we did. Bought a truckload of fill dirt & packed it all around the barn so that now there's a downward slope from the outside walls of the barn to the low ground. We also put up guttering and have long downspouts that reroute all the roof water to a few ft away from the barn. Although the guttering helps some, i suspect that the dirt we built up around the barn is what really did the trick. We've since gone through a heavy rain in which we received more than 10" of rain in a few days time & my rooster pen which would've been flooded remained dry!

-- Buk Buk (bukabuk@hotmail.com), September 29, 2001.

Is the barn small enought to jack it up and add fillage? Could it be put on rollers and towed to a higher site?

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), September 29, 2001.

Follow-on to Mitch's question. How large of a building is it? I recently moved a 10'x14' building by jacking it up, backing my equipment trailer underneath, setting the building on the trailer, transporting it to my lot, then reversed the process.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), September 29, 2001.

Barbara when we first moved out here to the woods, the only trees and brush I was insistant was coming down was the road in and the circle driveway around the big oaks! Well of course where we build our house, but I didn't move into the middle of the woods to live with a lawn! So there was this nice little clearing in the woods just south of the driveway, what a perfect place to put our little barn for my new goat! Like God made this nice little area for me. Little did I know that the reason why there were no trees, no brush, not even grass was because during the very rainy season it was a small 2 inch deep lake! Well not really a lake, but you get it. We brought in a tractor, and dug a very deep trench all the way around the barn, this worked great. Good luck with your lake/barn! I gave up, let the woods have its pond back and built the diary barn on the highest point on the property! Now I fight iron ore ground, and dust dust dust! Much nicer than mud though! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 29, 2001.


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