And it rained for 40 days...
A few weeks ago we were hit with a pretty hard rain storm. You know it's hard when you are forced to empty water out of your 24 foot (diameter) pool to keep it from over-flowing.
The following morning, Calli ran downstairs to the toy room to play and called up to me to come and "see something." When I got to the top of the stairs she said to me "Um, when I walk, there's something weird under my feet." From this picture, you can see what was weird.
Our gorgeous brand new carpet (not even a year old yet!) was sopping wet as was the crawl-space storage area. The sump pump had quit during the night and the basement had flooded.
This is the sump pit with the rain water/ground water just sitting.
Adam's foot submerged in the water. Luckily it was only ground water, although because it was ground water, they had to take out the carpet and we'll have to get new carpet installed. Ground water has dirt in it, so the carpet would not have been able to be cleaned properly.
The few boxes that were saved. We went out that same morning and bought a car full of Rubbermaid boxes to transfer everything from the cardboard boxes into.
More devastation...
We had quite a bit of salvageable stuff in the front yard drying out and being sorted. We had no less than 15 people stop and ask if we were having a Garage Sale!! People actually got out of their cars and were walking up the driveway to see what we had!
We phoned the insurance company right away and because it was a Construction Holiday and it was on a weekend, they had to send out the Emergency crew! We had taken out quite a lot of the storage stuff and had it drying out in the hot sun in our driveway. The crew of 4 people came and moved more boxes out, took stuff away to be cleaned, ripped out our carpet and installed giant blower fans and a temporary sump pump. We had the fans going for 7 days and the humidity was still detectable in our basement.
Remember the weird pit in the garage? It is apparently a sump overflow drain? It ended up flooding too, and our beautiful (not so much), old basement carpet was also ruined and will be replaced. We have not decided what to do with the garage flooring issue yet.
We are currently dealing with the insurance adjuster and a contractor, trying to get our basement repaired. There are approx $10,000 worth of repairs to be done down there, plus a few items of furniture that were lost and will be replaced and the carpet and underlay that needs to be installed. While we have the contractor here, we are going to see about putting a shower in the basement bathroom and finishing the whole thing.
Needless to say, we are in complete disarray. The girls no longer have a play room down there and are desperate to play with their toys, but we don't have room to move them anywhere else at this time. The garage is filled with boxes from the storage area downstairs and is jam packed. We have to do some major re-organizing and see if we can set up something for the girls and hopefully the contractor will be able to start soon and get going on fixing our house. Wish us luck!!
The following morning, Calli ran downstairs to the toy room to play and called up to me to come and "see something." When I got to the top of the stairs she said to me "Um, when I walk, there's something weird under my feet." From this picture, you can see what was weird.
Our gorgeous brand new carpet (not even a year old yet!) was sopping wet as was the crawl-space storage area. The sump pump had quit during the night and the basement had flooded.
This is the sump pit with the rain water/ground water just sitting.
Adam's foot submerged in the water. Luckily it was only ground water, although because it was ground water, they had to take out the carpet and we'll have to get new carpet installed. Ground water has dirt in it, so the carpet would not have been able to be cleaned properly.
The few boxes that were saved. We went out that same morning and bought a car full of Rubbermaid boxes to transfer everything from the cardboard boxes into.
More devastation...
We had quite a bit of salvageable stuff in the front yard drying out and being sorted. We had no less than 15 people stop and ask if we were having a Garage Sale!! People actually got out of their cars and were walking up the driveway to see what we had!
We phoned the insurance company right away and because it was a Construction Holiday and it was on a weekend, they had to send out the Emergency crew! We had taken out quite a lot of the storage stuff and had it drying out in the hot sun in our driveway. The crew of 4 people came and moved more boxes out, took stuff away to be cleaned, ripped out our carpet and installed giant blower fans and a temporary sump pump. We had the fans going for 7 days and the humidity was still detectable in our basement.
Remember the weird pit in the garage? It is apparently a sump overflow drain? It ended up flooding too, and our beautiful (not so much), old basement carpet was also ruined and will be replaced. We have not decided what to do with the garage flooring issue yet.
We are currently dealing with the insurance adjuster and a contractor, trying to get our basement repaired. There are approx $10,000 worth of repairs to be done down there, plus a few items of furniture that were lost and will be replaced and the carpet and underlay that needs to be installed. While we have the contractor here, we are going to see about putting a shower in the basement bathroom and finishing the whole thing.
Needless to say, we are in complete disarray. The girls no longer have a play room down there and are desperate to play with their toys, but we don't have room to move them anywhere else at this time. The garage is filled with boxes from the storage area downstairs and is jam packed. We have to do some major re-organizing and see if we can set up something for the girls and hopefully the contractor will be able to start soon and get going on fixing our house. Wish us luck!!
Comments
Anyhoo... thanks for the phone call last night, I will try to call you in the next few days.
Miss you
M-J
Dad
M-J
jenny