Hurricane Helene vs. our Schumacher Home

Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina on September 27, 2024. The damage has been unbelievable.

We knew we were in a flood zone when we built the house, but only by a few inches. We are in a 100-year floodplain. That means there is a 1-in-100 chance of flood in any year. We built for the possibility of floods and we had no damage. We prepared. But mostly we were incredibly lucky.

This is where our house is. We are close enough to the brook to flood, but we are up hill from Somerset Drive and Arlington, so it would seem the water would go down hill and it would be impossible to really really flood.

We have extremely deep and wide engineered footers that allow water to drain away. There is a layer of gravel wrapped in fabric to let water flow through. The footers are poured on top of that.

The footers are 5-feet or more deep and 3-feet or more wide poured with fiber reinforced concrete. All of the footings are connected and have a slight slope to drain to the sump area, that black spot on the left, located outside the house. Water will be drained by gravity away from the foundation.

There is a pump in the sump area well to move water to the waterway behind the house.

Flow through block will let water flow under the house and back out again if it ever floods high enough.

Truck loads of dirt inside and outside the house brought the lot above flood level.

The hot water heater is raised on a platform.

There is a platform for the heat pump. At first it was attached to the house, but it was REALLY noisy that way so the builders came back, put on two more legs and disconnected it from the wall.

The heat pump is on stilts so it stayed above the flood.

The water rose fast enough and high enough during Helene to get to the flow-through block and flow under the house.

The water was higher than the carport, which was above the flood elevation.

The house was completely surrounded by rushing water. Rushing water passed under the house. Flood water went significantly further than the map shows the flood zone. And we had no damage at all.

The generator is on a bit of a platform and there is a pan to keep water out of the generator. It’s actually higher than it looks in the photo.

We were out of power for days, but we had a generator that runs on natural gas so we didn’t have to wait in lines or go hunting gas or propane.