Within the last year, I have purchased an 80+ year-old house. The house has a sealed blacktop driveway that runs parallel to the house. The house has an integrated garage with swing-open (horizontally opening) doors. The garage floor is about 2-3 inches lower than the driveway, with the bottom of the doors being below the drop-off where the driveway meets the garage floor.
The garage gets some water in it, and when it storms it gets a lot of water. For the first time, we realized that the water may possibly be coming in through this gap since there's nothing to stop it (as opposed to general foundation leaking).
Is there a barrier method we can employ on the outside of the garage? Installing a french drain or similar mechanism would be extremely difficult due to the placement of the driveway and the garage, but laying those water-inflatable barriers would not be an option for freezing temperatures. How would I build such a barrier, and of what material? I'd like to keep the profile of the barrier as low as effectively possible to be able to use the garage from time to time.
Best Answer
Strangely enough, I have had to deal with this same problem a few times. Short of raising the garage or pouring a second higher floor, the solution is in the driveway. We had to excavate apx 6 feet of asphalt and create a gradual dip draining away from the house and garage to exit water. Obviously, they screwed up big time when the driveway was installed. Installing drains in the garage won't work, especially in freezing, thawing etc. All you will get is an ice covered floor. The only solution is to stop the water from getting in. That is going to mean reforming the driveway to self drain away, not into you garage. There is no quick cheap solution to your problem. Gravity rules!