House: 6 billion, Us: 1
Yesterday sucked. Today is on its way to sucking.
When I came home from work yesterday I looked down in the basement and there was a huge puddle of water at the base of the stairs. It was so unexpected that my mind couldn't process what was happening. I just stood there with a dumb look on my face while Roger, who somehow managed to figure out what was going on, ran into the basement to shut off the sump pump.
Here's what happened. It's so warm here that all the snow is melting. It's raining too, and the ground is so wet that it squishes when you walk on it. Our sump pump was working hard yesterday. Really hard. In fact, it was running constantly. Unfortunately it broke yesterday, and as it ran (constantly) it sprayed water out into the basement. The finished, carpeted basement.
We worked until 2 in the morning to move everything out of the basement and clean up all the water. We've got piles of stuff in our kitchen because we couldn't put anything wet on the hardwood floors in the rest of the house. We sucked water out of the carpet for hours. I'm still sucking water out of the floor today.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I also managed to get electrocuted. I still don't understand how that happened. I had been taking some stuff out to the garage and as I reached to shut the door my hand got electrocuted. Somehow the rails that the door travels on got charged and zapped me. It was about 5 minutes before I could unclench my fist. An hour later and I could finally feel all of my fingers.
I guess, in the end, we were pretty lucky. Nothing really got ruined except for one very outdated book. The water stopped short of our entertainment center, so all the expensive electronics are fine. The sump pump was fixed with a simple $1.75 part. (Why!!! Why didn't the previous owners just buy a new part instead of just taping it together, or whatever they thought they were doing! Why!) And there was only one electrocution despite the computers, lamps, extension cords and other electronics sitting in puddles of water.
Despite all the adversity, we did manage one small victory. This fall there was a corner of our basement where water was trickling in a bit. We extended one of the gutters hoping to carry water farther from that corner and it looks like it worked. It was one of the few spots in the basement that was bone dry.
When I came home from work yesterday I looked down in the basement and there was a huge puddle of water at the base of the stairs. It was so unexpected that my mind couldn't process what was happening. I just stood there with a dumb look on my face while Roger, who somehow managed to figure out what was going on, ran into the basement to shut off the sump pump.
Here's what happened. It's so warm here that all the snow is melting. It's raining too, and the ground is so wet that it squishes when you walk on it. Our sump pump was working hard yesterday. Really hard. In fact, it was running constantly. Unfortunately it broke yesterday, and as it ran (constantly) it sprayed water out into the basement. The finished, carpeted basement.
We worked until 2 in the morning to move everything out of the basement and clean up all the water. We've got piles of stuff in our kitchen because we couldn't put anything wet on the hardwood floors in the rest of the house. We sucked water out of the carpet for hours. I'm still sucking water out of the floor today.
As if that wasn't bad enough, I also managed to get electrocuted. I still don't understand how that happened. I had been taking some stuff out to the garage and as I reached to shut the door my hand got electrocuted. Somehow the rails that the door travels on got charged and zapped me. It was about 5 minutes before I could unclench my fist. An hour later and I could finally feel all of my fingers.
I guess, in the end, we were pretty lucky. Nothing really got ruined except for one very outdated book. The water stopped short of our entertainment center, so all the expensive electronics are fine. The sump pump was fixed with a simple $1.75 part. (Why!!! Why didn't the previous owners just buy a new part instead of just taping it together, or whatever they thought they were doing! Why!) And there was only one electrocution despite the computers, lamps, extension cords and other electronics sitting in puddles of water.
Despite all the adversity, we did manage one small victory. This fall there was a corner of our basement where water was trickling in a bit. We extended one of the gutters hoping to carry water farther from that corner and it looks like it worked. It was one of the few spots in the basement that was bone dry.