The History: This home was built in the early 90’s in an upscale development in Woodbury Minnesota. The garage floor was installed with a center floor drain. A handy and useful feature in any garage. Especially in Minnesota, where snow melts from vehicles in the winter.
The Challenge: However, in this case, the drain simply didn’t work. The reason being, the drain was set too high in the floor, which caused a large ponding area around the drain.
To show this, we placed a level between the drain and the surrounding floor. Surprisingly, this challenge is not that uncommon.
The Solution: The “old school” solution is to build up concrete or repair material around the floor drain so that water flows correctly. We’ve seen this attempted numerous times – generally, this solution is short-lived. Often times, the fill will delaminate due to moisture building up around the drain. Add in freeze / thaw cycles and road salts – delamination is inevitable.
Our solution: instead of adding concrete around the drain, we create drain paths. By cutting notches in the cast iron drain bowl, and drainage paths in the surrounding concrete, our solution allows water to easily flow into the drain. Simple. Furthermore, we give our customers a surface that is easily cleanable, and with a soft double headed foam squeegee the customer can move water and debris to the drain in minutes. Leaving the surface bone-dry and ready for use.
To prove that our thought-process and solution worked. We returned days later and flooded the floor with 10 gallons of water and gave our customer a squeegee and asked him politely to clean his floor. And as you can see from the pictures, it worked perfectly. The floor drain that was unusable for the last 15 years now worked as it should.
Our customer’s comment: “It works!”
Comments? Questions? Call us at 612.919.4414
