It has been raining cats and dogs the last few weeks. Suddenly the car park is flooded and everyone is panicking and rushing to get their cars to higher grounds. No one knows the cause of the flooding and how to resolve the matter.
Has your estate been in such a situation? If it happens, your estate should look at the sump pump system. Normally in the basement car park, there is a huge water “tank” or “reservoir” that is built beneath the lowest level of the car park to contain the rain water run-off. The sump could be full and the water is over flowing.
Under normal circumstances, the sump pump sensors should work and when there is a high water level, it activates the sump pump to pump the excess water into the public drains. When these sensors fail, the pump electricals tripped/failed or the sump pumps fail, then the water overflows the sump. There are normally two or more pumps. When one pump fails, the electricals (if not faulty) should be able to switch over to the spare pump. But when the sensors fail or the electrical controls are faulty, this does not happen. A water system contractor would be needed to help look into this problem.
The other possibility is the drains to this sump could be choked with debris and need to be declogged. Sometimes odd situations happen, eg, like a small soft teddy bear clogging the drain. The estate then needs to engage a plumber with high pressure water jetting equipment to do the job. The high pressure water jetting equipment is housed on a truck with a generator and the contractor needs to drive the whole vehicle in. If the car park entrance clearance is too low and the distance to the sump drains is too far, it may pose a big problem for the contractor and they may have to figure a way to get to the drains. Often the sump drains declogging needs to be done once every 2 years or so, depending on the volume of debris and the tyre dirt that is generated from the vehicular movement in the car park.