Under Water

This is a picture of my basement, under approximately 4-inches of water. It still amazes me that I live high on a hill, and my basement floods repeatedly. This is the second flood we've had since moving into the house, and it wasn't until after our first flood that we learned the previous tenants had been flooded many times, too. But that's another story.

This flood came during the mid-May deluge of rain, more than 12-inches in Greater Manchester and surrounding communities. They're calling this the 70-year flood and in other parts of the state, it's tearing down bridges, flooding over damns, and sweeping away roads. The only thing that kept me sane the past 12-hours is seeing news footage of other people who are worse off than we are.

I have a sump pump in my basement, of course, but even though it's pumping water out from under my foundation at a rate of 1-gallon every 5 seconds (yes, I timed it), it just isn't enough to keep up with the run-off from my neighbors yard (who happen to live behind me, and just a little higher on the same hill).

You can see form the photo that the water is actually down several inches. There's a water line on the foundation support pipe, and a more evident one on the cardboard storage box in the top right corner. I estimate the water rose as high as 8-10 inches. It ruined many boxes of Christmas decorations, some of my old RPG manuals, and files of "not so important" papers (mostly past year tax returns). I lost two beautiful posters that I had framed for my office, back when I used to manage from an office (rather than the cube farm, that I now manage from). Crates filled with childrens' toys, which are no longer played with, fell over and got soaked and mostly ruined.

I spent all day pumping out the water. In the early part of the morning, I was actually down there with a 5-gallon bucket and a smaller "transfer pail". While crouching precariously at the bottom of the bulkhead stairs, I would dip the pail into the flooded water, transfered that collected water to the larger 5-gallon bucket, and then carried the bucket up the stairs to the children's wagon -- where I would pour the 5-gallon bucket into a larger (25-gallon?) plastic tote. Rinse, repeat, and once the tote was filled, I'd haul the hole thing off to the front of the house and send it down the hill (hoping that my neighbors on the other side of my driveway weren't getting similarly flooded by my efforts).

Yes, it seemed futile to me, too ... but I had to do something! If you're curious, I timed myself at 1-gallon every 53-seconds. Not nearly as good as a sump pump, but it kept me busy. Finally, WD was able to get a spare sump pump from my sister-in-law (an investment I'm going to make myself, once local hardware stores are restocked on them -- they were completely sold out today). The combined output of both sump pumps started lowering the water about 1-inch every 1.5 hours. The basement was mostly empty of water (and by this, I mean that there was nothing more for the sump pump to collect, but there were still huge puddles that must now be mopped up) shortly after noon.

I'm going to spend the next couple of days fighting with my insurance company, hauling soggy trash and lost possesions up from the basement, and tossing them into a "rent-a-dumpster". I'll probably have Service Master come out and take all the mildew and mold out, since that's a project I really didn't manage well with the flast flood. And after that, I'm going to install two more sump pumps in my basement ... for next years flood season.