Flooded garden and garage

marco79

marco79

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Due to the last nights rain here in Cape Town our garden and garage is flooded. This is not the first time. This happened twice earlier this year already but within an hour after the rains the water subsided. We do have an outlet pipe leading to the road but our road is also flooded about 2 properties on either side. Ours is the only garden thats flooded. Over the last 2 hours the water subsided about 20mm. I still have to walk through about 50mm water to get to my car.

I called the municipality and they will send out somebody to see if they could help with the draining of the water. I don't see this happening soon because it's raining pretty hard again.

Do we have any recourse against the previous owners of the house? We are living here 1 year already.
 
marco79 said:
Due to the last nights rain here in Cape Town our garden and garage is flooded. This is not the first time. This happened twice earlier this year already but within an hour after the rains the water subsided. We do have an outlet pipe leading to the road but our road is also flooded about 2 properties on either side. Ours is the only garden thats flooded. Over the last 2 hours the water subsided about 20mm. I still have to walk through about 50mm water to get to my car.

I called the municipality and they will send out somebody to see if they could help with the draining of the water. I don't see this happening soon because it's raining pretty hard again.

Do we have any recourse against the previous owners of the house? We are living here 1 year already.
Click to expand...

Nope.
 
marco79 said:
The whole road is flooded so the water can't flow out.
Click to expand...

If the road is flooded, and wasn't flooded the previous two times, then the street storm sewer is probably blocked. Once the metro clears that out, your place should drain.

Regarding the question about recourse to the previous owner, a tendancy for the area to flood into the building regularly may be regarded as something that should be disclosed to a new purchaser, Google shows that the US and Canada mention regular flooding of the building in discussions on latent defects. In the same articles though, they do say visible water stains that are not questioned by the buyer do not have to be explained by the seller as they are obvious. As far as SA is concerned, I cannot find any discussions about flooding specifically. Send a question to one of those real estate forums on News24 or IOL.
 
My road is also flooded. I paddled to the end where the storm water drain is located and shoveled out the leaves, a dead cat and debris and within 45 mins it was gone. The person outside whose house the drain is located asked me why I did not wait for Council, but I imagine they have more drastic problems to solve. It was about 300mm deep at the drain.
 
Crap.. if you guys are getting that much rain it means its heading up the coast again.... don't need more rain.. you can keep it!


As for recourse, if you can prove that the previous owner covered things up so you didn't notice water stains and the like, then maybe.. but it might not be worth your while.

Personally, I'd take the opportunity to install a JoJo tank and use it to keep the rain water... you can reduce your water bill quite nicely like that.
 
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