The Garage Elevation Issue

I don't think I blogged about this yet, but it turns out the floor of my front garage is not high enough according to the Parish. Instead of being 3 ft higher than the crest of the street, it's 2 ft 10 inches! Because of that 2 inch difference, they want to require me to have flood vents in the garage...

This would be something like you'd find at www.smartvent.com. They're big, expensive, and ugly. And I'd need at least two of them on two different walls of the garage! So I'd have to cut through the concrete ledge that the wall is currently built on to stick two of these in there. All this is so that when the big flood comes, water can get in and out of the house.

Well, who is to say that the "big flood" won't be higher than this and get into the house as well? Who is to say it would be even this high? It's all so arbitrary that it's unbelievable. But then again, it is the Parish government we're talking about here...

My mom had an idea to get me around having the flood vents in my garage. I need to call the code enforcement office to see if I can put a 2-inch layer of bricks across the floor of my garage.