Toronto’s Basement Flooding Program
Regardless if your home has never flooded before, many homes are still at risk of basement flooding.
Water in your basement is most likely to occur when sewers are overloaded during a heavy rainfall or when snow and ice are melting. However, the good news is that you can take steps to help reduce or prevent it from happening including using the city’s basement flooding protection subsidy program.
The City of Toronto offers owners of a single-family, duplex, and triplex residential homes a subsidy of up to $3,400 per property to install flood protection devices. Eligible work includes:
- Installation of a backwater valve
- Installation of a sump pump
- Severance and capping of a home’s storm sewer or external weeping tile connection
Disconnecting the downspouts from your property’s eavestrough system is not eligible for a subsidy.
How to Prevent Basement Flooding
Keep Water Out
- Seal cracks or leaks in walls, floors, windows and foundations, and seal all window wells.
- Clear eavestroughs and downspouts of leaves and other debris that prevent drainage.
- Disconnect your downspouts from the sewer system, where feasible (without negatively affecting neighbouring properties or creating an area where water will pool on a sidewalk or driveway).
- Make sure your disconnected downspouts are draining properly, ideally two metres from your foundation walls.
- Ensure the grading around your home slopes away from the foundation wall to help drain water away from your home (without negatively affecting neighbouring properties).
- Increase the green space around your home with native plants and shrubs and install porous pavement to help absorb rainwater and melted snow.
- Repair or replace damaged weeping tile systems.
- Weeping tiles (also known as a French drain) are pipes with small holes located underground near your basement foundations to collect groundwater/rainwater.
- Their purpose is for waterproofing basements.
- Weeping tiles may drain into a solid pipe leading to a discharge or directly into a sump, where the water can be removed by a sump pump; however, it depends on your home’s drainage system.
- Check the corners of your basement regularly and if the floor is damp/wet, your weeping tiles may not be working properly and may need to be repaired or replaced.
- If your weeping tiles are connected to the sewer system, it is recommended that you disconnect it and install a sump pump and/or backwater valve (see Maintain Your Plumbing System under the Inside the House section below for more information).
- If you are not sure if you have weeping tiles and/or if the weeping tiles are connected to the sewer system, please contact a licensed plumber for help.
- Safely clear debris from roadside catch basins (grates) to help water enter the stormsewer.
- Ensure drainage swales (shallow ditches) between properties are maintained and clear of obstructions.
Maintain your Plumbing System
- Ensure that your plumbing and drainage systems are in good working condition and understand how they function and how to maintain them.
- Fix cracks, blockages or other condition problems.
- Avoiding creating clogs:
- Do not flush dental floss, Q-tips or other personal care products (i.e. “flushable” wipes, condoms or tampons). These should be disposed of in the appropriate bin.
- Never pour fats, oils and grease down the drain. Dispose of small amounts in your green bin with material to absorb it.
- Learn more about what not to flush and how to dispose of these items.
- Hire a City-licensed plumber to:
- inspect the full length of the sanitary pipe under the basement floor for weeping tile connections;
- install a backwater valve or sewage ejector pump*, ensuring the weeping tile/foundation drain, if present, is connected downstream of the backwater valve;
- install a properly-sized sump pump and piping.
- Ensure proper and regular maintenance of the above devices in your home, including:
- annual cleaning of the backwater valve via the clean-out ports;
- consider installing a back-up power source for your sump pump.