Serving Hays
Groundwater & Basement Water Intrusion in Hays, KS
Basement seepage, failed sumps, and hydrostatic pressure against the foundation are extracted and dried, and the path from the ground is identified so the loss does not repeat. Groundwater and basement seepage are extracted and dried only after the path from the soil is identified — a wall, a slab, a drain, or a failed sump. Drying the interior without stopping that path returns the same water to the same floor.
Frequently asked questions
Half a year of rain came down in one evening.
Storms on the high plains stop moving and repeat over the same few square miles for hours, which is not a condition any drainage arrangement is built for. It means monthly and annual figures are close to useless as design numbers. The relevant quantity is what one night can produce, and it is several times larger than any average would suggest.
The creek is small and it does an enormous amount.
It gathers from a catchment far larger than the channel through town suggests, on ground that absorbs very little, so it responds within the hour and has almost no room in its section to take a rise. The level jumps rather than spreading and falls back as fast. Near a channel like that, any plan has to be in place beforehand.
The ground was hard as a road when the rain started.
After a long dry spell it effectively is one. Baked prairie soil takes almost nothing of the first heavy rain, so a storm arriving at the end of a dry summer runs off far more completely than the same storm in a wet spring. The counter-intuitive result is that a dry season raises the flood risk rather than lowering it.
The Hays overview carries this FAQ with the city research.