Question - Water Problem (VA)

Hi,

One of our HOA residents is having a water issue in under his house and in his yard. We checked our irrigation systems, and the county came out and did an inspection, and found no leaks. He has no leaks in his lines either. Evidently there is a ground water problem, with a natural spring pumping water onto common area, which runs off onto his property. All of the drainage, common areas, etc were done by the community developer. The homeowner is asking the HOA to fix the problem.

Anyone run into this type of issue before? I suppose we could run a drain off of the common area (if that's really what it is), but how would we address a natural spring, if the problem isn't originating from our property?

Any insights would be appreciated.

Thanks

It depends on how your HOA is set up. Does the owner own the house and the lot the house sits on and the rest is common property? Do the owners own their own house and property but share common areas like entrance signs/pool/clubhouse? Need to define how the common area is defined in your HOA.

I did have a serious flooding issue within our HOA on common property. It was with rain run off. It only happened when it rained. So can't stop the rain from happening...Gave me nightmares everytime it poured rain. Nothing much you can do about it than do some minor diversion tactics. Such as the owner putting up gutters on their house. Which gutters are NOT covered by the HOA.

My suggestion if you were to repair such a problem and decide it is a HOA issue to spend money on it...Installing a french drain system and/or dry well. Depending on the set up a dry well may be what is needed here. Just did an episode on "This old House" about installing one of those you may want to look at. Mind you they do things a bit intense on the show and other simpler options may apply. I have installed a french drain system and ran it into a dry well system before. It's EXTREMELY labor intensive but the supplies are rather cheap. Just make sure to buy the "sock" that fits over the pipe before you bury it back in. Don't want it to clog. We also installed one on other people's areas with similar issues to help with the water flow. It may be your solution. Do some looking up on french drain systems.

I have a water problem as well. which is caused by the enclosed space between my home and garage. I would agree with melissa, it is likely that french drains need to be installed to direct the run-off