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December 03, 2007
Flooded Basement
Ahhh, the joys of homeownership...NOT! So yesterday, as you may know, rain was pouring all day long. Actually, DOWN-pouring is more like it. Luckily, when we moved in, Don was wise enough to get a backup system installed for our sump pump so that if the power ever goes out (which it did momentarily yesterday), the pump would still work.
So you'd think we'd NEVER get a flooded basement. Wrong! We got home about 9:30 or 10:00pm and didn't see the basement for at least a half hour that the basement was flooded. The sump pump was working just fine and so, I'm sure, was the backup system. But what broke was the hose clamp. We had water shooting all over the storage room floor and soaking well into the carpet of our family room. Luckily, we don't have too much stored right on the floor so nothing important was damaged. Even the stuff inside the boxes that got wet was undamaged, though the boxes are unusable, but so what. Thank god it didn't get to any of our expensive electronics, like our big screen TV or our computer (which was plugged into a surge protector laying on the carpet just where the water stopped).
The only bad part was that I had to spend two solid hours last night till past midnight sucking up the water with our carpet cleaner (another one of Don's INCREDIBLY wise purchases). The reservoir in that thing only holds about a gallon or a gallon and a half, so I had to empty out that thing about 20 times, the first several times having had to empty after only a couple of passes over the soaked area! You should have seen how fast that thing filled up. For those of you who know what our basement looks like, the water had reached all through the storage room and into the family room just before the loveseat and just to the edge of the bar. It also reached about a 1/3 of the way into the office. Don had to move his book cases since it seeped beneath the bottom of the dividing walls.
Don used the shop vac to vacuum the water from the storage room floor and went out at about 11:30pm to see if Meijer's had a dehumidifyer; unfortunately, they didn't. But we got most of the water out and put 2 fans and a heater in the basement, so I guess a dehumidifyer isn't an urgently immediate need, though we'll still probably get one today. I'm hoping it'll be mostly dry by tonight.
Ugh! What a pain in the ass!!
Posted by Amy at December 3, 2007 09:55 AM
Comments
Basement floodage = a completely foreign concept to me. Basements pretty much do not exist here in Cali or if they do, they're custom. The first time I ever saw one was when I visited my aunt and uncle when they lived in ID. I loved the whole basement idea, but felt sorta banished... ehhhhhh.......
Stupid question: What are basements for???? Is it just for like storage?? Or a refuge for storms??? Or an extra room in general???????????????
Meat be clueless. Please do not throw stones at her. ;p
Posted by: meat ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://priori2ude.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 12, 2007 11:08 PM
We already had a big dehumidifier for the basement. Unfortunately it burned out about a month ago. I came home and thought I smelled something burning. I hunted around for a while and found it was the dehumidifier. It wasn't on fire or anything, but the motor burned out.
Anyway I knew I would end up getting a new one, but I didn't think there was any particular hurry since a dehumidifier is generally more useful in the summer, and summer was long gone.
How ironic that our basement floods, even with the backup sump pump, and that our dehumidifier burned out a few weeks before. I ran out to Lowes early this morning to buy a new one and left it running all day.
Posted by: Mastadon at December 3, 2007 11:47 PM
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