How often should you clear your window wells?

Why bother

Blocked wells flood the basement. Standard upkeep. Dull and cheap, and a lot less dull than whatever it's quietly preventing.

What the job involves

1. Lift the cover off and pull out the leaves, twigs, trash and whatever else the wind dumped in there, by hand or with a small scoop.
2. Scoop out the gravel at the bottom, rinse the muck off it, and lay it back loosely. Packed-hard gravel is the usual reason a well stops draining; top up with fresh pea gravel if it's looking thin.
3. Tip a bucket of water in and watch it. It should drain away. If it sits there pooling, the drain below is clogged or collapsed, and that's a bigger job.
4. Wipe the window down and put the cover back on, so the next pile of leaves stays out.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself, mostly. It's a scoop, rinse and re-lay job: a small shovel, gloves, and a bag or two of pea gravel ($4-$6 a bag), well under $200 in materials. Only hand it over if the well's own drain is clogged or collapsed; a handyman runs about $50-$125/hr, often with a minimum fee, and replacing a damaged drain can climb into the thousands.

What skipping it costs

$500 to $10,000 if a blocked well overflows into the basement. A clogged well with hard-packed gravel can't drain, so it fills like a bathtub and the water pours over the sill or seeps through the frame onto the floor below. A few inches is the cheap end. A bad soaking that gets into the drywall, the flooring and whatever you've got stored down there is the dear end, with the average cleanup and repair running roughly $2,400 to $5,000. A scoop and a bucket of water is the cheap end of that range.

Signs it's overdue

• Water pools in the bottom of the well and sits there for hours after rain instead of draining off.
• Damp patches, staining or a musty smell on the basement wall or floor under the window.
• The well is packed solid with matted leaves and silt, or the gravel at the bottom has gone hard.

When to start thinking about it

Give yourself about 7 days' notice. That's when Grumpty starts grumbling, so it doesn't land on you the day it's due. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 12 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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