My little 1956 house has a single-car garage that was converted into a room, but they did not raise the floor when they converted it. As a result, the floor in there is at least 5" below the rest of the house. We've had a TON of rain lately here in Oklahoma, and now we're getting a flood in the garage room.

Here's what we saw at 3am with flashlights (power was out). It looked like the baseboards on the end wall (where garage door would be) were wet about 1/2" from floor up. The water came about 5 or 6 feet in and spread across about 8 feet wide. And I might be crazy, but something about the way the foreword edge of the water was rounded up on the linoleum made me think this was gushing in, as opposed to the thinner, creeping edges you might get on a puddle with a slow drip. The water was gone by mid-morning even though we had rain all night. I suppose it drained away, because we didn't have any power for fans to help it evaporate, and it's too humid here for that much water to have evaporated without a fan.

Outside, we're pretty sure the cement porch that wraps from the front of the house around and in front of the end garage wall was poured after the garage was converted, and that the porch might be 2 to 3 inches higher than the floor of the garage room. You can see part of the brick wall below the edge of the siding, though the siding comes pretty close to the porch floor on that end wall. Most of the water came from the end wall corner that is surrounded by this porch floor. On the other side wall, the ground is considerably lower, and the cement there slopes down away from the wall.

The gutters over the porch are a known problem and have been on the list to fix. There is usually quite a drip line onto the porch, one of the bad spots being right in front of the garage. Since the flood we have cleaned out the gutters and made sure the down spout by the garage flows out onto that low area to the side. We're going to fix the drip line as soon as possible, which might mean replacing the gutter. We're also going to dig the grass away from the edge of the porch and generally make sure it drains as well as possible.

Is there anything else we can do? I KNOW that room hasn't flooded in the five years previous, but we've never had THIS much rain. Could we put a sealant on the exposed bricks and where the porch floor joins that wall?

Also, has anyone ever used those gutter downspout caps that are supposed to roll out when it rains, then roll back up afterward? Do they work? Or should we just point the downspout out to the side?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Julie