the sounds of spring
I have heard so many birds chirping in the past few days, kids are playing outside, little yappy ass dogs are barking at everything, and Sunday evening I woke up from a rainy afternoon nap and came downstairs to make some tea and I thought I heard things moving in my basement.
It sounded like things were bumping into other things down there...wait, what?
Because they were....FLOATING. yeah, I got the poop again.
But not as much as last year. WTF is going on when I can think "Oh, whew, i only got 7 inches of sewage!"? But that's what we got.
Cliff's notes:
5:30 i heard things in the basement and went to see what was going on, saw things floating past the steps. Stand there gobsmacked for several minutes.
5:35 trying to remember how to breathe
5:36 calling WE for emergency service to cut our power off before the house catches fire, threaten to hit The Man when he says he is going down to unplug things.
6:15 power off, things unplugged, WE guy goes down there with The Man and cuts the gas to the water heater and we turn off the furnace in case the water keeps rising. It was just lapping over the bottom step at that point. Then the guy puts our power back on. YES!
6:30 using the hot water we still had, the hubs scours himself in the shower and throws away a really nice pair of jeans when he gets out.
6:45 the hubs runs out to fetch a new cat box and litter, because for some reason the cats still need to poop. Whatever, cats.
8ish remember to call the city sewer backup hotline. They say they will send an inspector. Oh I have heard that before.
11ish I bought a new humidifier from amazon to be overnighted to me by Tuesday (3.99 for overnight, love the prime memebrship)
11:40 speak to a city employee checking manhole covers on my street who makes it very clear that they are overflowing and he is trying to find the blockage. I tell him our water is going down quickly now and he says a crew will be back later as there are other emergencies.
Keep checking and think the water is receding, by midnight it is down and I just hear gurgling coming from the drain.
Monday morning was spent on the phone with the city fuckers who have since decided that my line is clogged and I need to have it reamed out., my alderman's aide Sherman (he sounds like a nice young man), GE to ask about my washer and dryer (they said to let them dry and then plug 'em in and see what happened) and various other calls. We decided to not put in an insurance claim since we don't want to be cancelled. Then we went to Lowe's and bought supplies to get down there and tackle this mess.
We bagged up all the cat litter, the pantry foods in boxes that dind't get wet but felt damp (the canned goods will be going too, but the boxes would start molding so they went yesterday) , most of my NEW and UNUSED christmas ornaments, most of my fabulous new Halloween decorations, a few laundry items that were on a low shelf (the purple sweater I knit last summer). there is hardly anything down there, it took around 8 contractor bags. Then we sprayed clean water around and I shop vacced for several hours. Then I used a garden sprayer with a strong bleach solution and sprayed everything down and put fans . Then we got cleaned up and my sweetie took me to the Sonic drive in for a watermelon slush and a corndog. Whoooo-eeeee!
It was hard work, this morning my everything hurt. And it was gross, I won't lie. The backup didn't leave a lot of stuff behind but one of the litter boxes dumped and oh, that is NASTY. I sucked and sucked with that shop vac, the one we bought last year when The Man still thought there was something we could be doing. But we dug in and got it over with. I guess we paid attention a little bit last summer!
Around midnight last night I watched a man in a truck pull up and sort through all my trash at the curb, he took all the brownie mixes. He took the dripping dehumidifier, he took all of my cardmaking supplies. I know 4 of those bags had litter boxes dumped into them, who the hell takes FOOD from a pile like that?!
This morning I followed the advice from GE and gave the washer and dryer a shot. They work. I'll be damned. Niiiiiiice.
With three fans going the floor was nearly all dry by the afternoon when w set up the new dehumidifier and I will do two more bleach treatments on the dry floor so I can make sure I am covering the whole area, I am debating calling a company to come down and spray biocide, though. And I will be having my drains inspected to see if this is our problem and to see what we can do from inside the house to make this shit stop happening.
I'm still pretty pissed off and I'm not done bitching at the city about this, 5 of my neighbor's got backwater at the same time, all about the same amount and it all went down at the same time. Went down by itself, except for the guy who was pumping it out as it happened. If only my drains are clogged, how would we all flood together? And if my drain is clogged, how did it drain out so much water so fast once it began to go down? But all in all, i think we are taking this in stride, it's cleaned up for less than $500 (including the new dehumidifer) and it only took one day. Hopefully the farking pilot will light tomorrow or the next day and I can take a really long hot shower again soon. If not, then we will suck it up and get a new one and add it to the claim I plan to file against the city.
Life goes on, and hopefully it will be dryer as spring carries on!
It sounded like things were bumping into other things down there...wait, what?
Because they were....FLOATING. yeah, I got the poop again.
But not as much as last year. WTF is going on when I can think "Oh, whew, i only got 7 inches of sewage!"? But that's what we got.
Cliff's notes:
5:30 i heard things in the basement and went to see what was going on, saw things floating past the steps. Stand there gobsmacked for several minutes.
5:35 trying to remember how to breathe
5:36 calling WE for emergency service to cut our power off before the house catches fire, threaten to hit The Man when he says he is going down to unplug things.
6:15 power off, things unplugged, WE guy goes down there with The Man and cuts the gas to the water heater and we turn off the furnace in case the water keeps rising. It was just lapping over the bottom step at that point. Then the guy puts our power back on. YES!
6:30 using the hot water we still had, the hubs scours himself in the shower and throws away a really nice pair of jeans when he gets out.
6:45 the hubs runs out to fetch a new cat box and litter, because for some reason the cats still need to poop. Whatever, cats.
8ish remember to call the city sewer backup hotline. They say they will send an inspector. Oh I have heard that before.
11ish I bought a new humidifier from amazon to be overnighted to me by Tuesday (3.99 for overnight, love the prime memebrship)
11:40 speak to a city employee checking manhole covers on my street who makes it very clear that they are overflowing and he is trying to find the blockage. I tell him our water is going down quickly now and he says a crew will be back later as there are other emergencies.
Keep checking and think the water is receding, by midnight it is down and I just hear gurgling coming from the drain.
Monday morning was spent on the phone with the city fuckers who have since decided that my line is clogged and I need to have it reamed out., my alderman's aide Sherman (he sounds like a nice young man), GE to ask about my washer and dryer (they said to let them dry and then plug 'em in and see what happened) and various other calls. We decided to not put in an insurance claim since we don't want to be cancelled. Then we went to Lowe's and bought supplies to get down there and tackle this mess.
We bagged up all the cat litter, the pantry foods in boxes that dind't get wet but felt damp (the canned goods will be going too, but the boxes would start molding so they went yesterday) , most of my NEW and UNUSED christmas ornaments, most of my fabulous new Halloween decorations, a few laundry items that were on a low shelf (the purple sweater I knit last summer). there is hardly anything down there, it took around 8 contractor bags. Then we sprayed clean water around and I shop vacced for several hours. Then I used a garden sprayer with a strong bleach solution and sprayed everything down and put fans . Then we got cleaned up and my sweetie took me to the Sonic drive in for a watermelon slush and a corndog. Whoooo-eeeee!
It was hard work, this morning my everything hurt. And it was gross, I won't lie. The backup didn't leave a lot of stuff behind but one of the litter boxes dumped and oh, that is NASTY. I sucked and sucked with that shop vac, the one we bought last year when The Man still thought there was something we could be doing. But we dug in and got it over with. I guess we paid attention a little bit last summer!
Around midnight last night I watched a man in a truck pull up and sort through all my trash at the curb, he took all the brownie mixes. He took the dripping dehumidifier, he took all of my cardmaking supplies. I know 4 of those bags had litter boxes dumped into them, who the hell takes FOOD from a pile like that?!
This morning I followed the advice from GE and gave the washer and dryer a shot. They work. I'll be damned. Niiiiiiice.
With three fans going the floor was nearly all dry by the afternoon when w set up the new dehumidifier and I will do two more bleach treatments on the dry floor so I can make sure I am covering the whole area, I am debating calling a company to come down and spray biocide, though. And I will be having my drains inspected to see if this is our problem and to see what we can do from inside the house to make this shit stop happening.
I'm still pretty pissed off and I'm not done bitching at the city about this, 5 of my neighbor's got backwater at the same time, all about the same amount and it all went down at the same time. Went down by itself, except for the guy who was pumping it out as it happened. If only my drains are clogged, how would we all flood together? And if my drain is clogged, how did it drain out so much water so fast once it began to go down? But all in all, i think we are taking this in stride, it's cleaned up for less than $500 (including the new dehumidifer) and it only took one day. Hopefully the farking pilot will light tomorrow or the next day and I can take a really long hot shower again soon. If not, then we will suck it up and get a new one and add it to the claim I plan to file against the city.
Life goes on, and hopefully it will be dryer as spring carries on!