Storm shelter maintenance / repair

[SlugSlinger]

We have an outdoor in ground concrete storm shelter we installed after the EF2 hit out place on 2016. It’s been leak free and we are happy with it.

My daughter bought a house a couple years ago that has an inground in the garage shelter. It seems to be made from some thin gauge sheet metal. The issue with it is the metal has several pinholes and the shelter must be below the wet season water table as it will get a foot of water in it this time of year. We are trying to figure out a way to keep the water out. They’ve bought a submersible pump to remove the water but there has got to be a way to seal it up?

I’ve thought about cutting a large hole in the floor of the shelter and installing a catch basin to work with the pump to better drain the water. But this seems extreme to me. Now the pump won’t remove all the water and leaves an inch or two of water before it starts cavitating.

 

[bigfug]

Flexseal? Sounds like there were no anodes or the anodes failed. Who was the installer/company? Any chance its under warranty? OKC Shelters advertises they do repairs, but I dont know I would spend a lot of money as it sounds like there is corrosion, and probably needs to be replaced at some point.

 

[cowadle]

If my memory serves me? There were some casualties in those type of shelters from the house covering the door after a tornado,and water filling and drowning the occupants.

 

[SoonerP226]

If it's leaking that much through pinholes, it sounds like the walls are shot and they'll be better off replacing it instead of trying to patch it. The soil in central Oklahoma is pretty danged corrosive to iron/steel, which is why we don't use a lot of iron/steel piping buried in the ground. I'm not entirely surprised that a company would use crap materials, especially when the gov't was handing out money for the installation of storm shelters, but using thin gauge steel in an Oklahoma in-ground shelter just seems criminally negligent.

 

[bigfug]

If my memory serves me? There were some casualties in those type of shelters from the house covering the door after a tornado,and water filling and drowning the occupants.

Only one, but basically a river ended up running through her property, so not likely to happen to 99.9% of shelters. She was in a fairly rural area.

https://www.news9.com/story/5e34c6c...tifies-okc-woman-who-drowned-in-storm-shelter

 

[jtmcglothin]

Most of those garage shelters came with a 25 year warranty, the only problem is if the company had this poor quality they’re probably not around to stand behind the product. I’d say either flex seal as mentioned or get a mig welder from harbor freight and tack the pinholes. Also not a bad idea to get a ratcheting come-along to keep down there to open the door in case it jams.

 

[XYZ]

Wasn’t there a guy on here that installed them?

 

[turkeyrun]

Wasn’t there a guy on here that installed them?

F5 shelters

 

[rickm]

I would have a hard time having much confidence in one made out of metal but thats just me was raised with a dug out and framed with old telephone poles and bridge timbers for the walls and roof then covered with dirt and it survived atleast 2 tornados that i can remember that passed over. I would rather just build one on site over the prefab ones, the ones i have seen the steps are to hard to get in and out of if you have some physical handicap or mobility issue.

 

[Mr.Glock]

There are companies that will pressure seal it. They will drill holes and use high pressure pumps to inject hydrophilic foam in and around the shelter.



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