I’m kinda feeling like I should say “Adventures in the Basement – Day 1 – Morning” because the rate things are going, there may be several posts per day about this adventure.
In the basement garage/shop, there’s a closet that has the water heater, water softener and the a/c/heat inside unit. This is also the room where the “kitchen” is set up and, there are tons of boxes everywhere in there.
This morning when Vince went to take Rita out, before daylight, there was water everywhere. He starts yelling “The basement is full of water”. Hmmm .. I got out of bed, I went in the sewing room to have a chat with Boots, I’m in in the bathroom now getting dressed and so far, I haven’t stepped in water so I wouldn’t say the basement is FULL OF WATER.
On the other side of the closet was more water and it had run across so all the boxes in that area that were on the bottom of the stacks got wet. I didn’t ask him to move so I could take a picture . . I figured the less time I spent in there at the moment, the better off we would both be.
There’s a drain hose that goes from the water softener to a drain hole in the floor. Last week Vince added salt to the water softener and apparently he moved that drain hose without noticing so when the water softener regenerated, all the water came into the garage/makeshift kitchen.
The floor guy wasn’t here yet so Vince ran up and came back with a stack of bath towels. I said “NO WAY!” It’s too hard to do laundry and I surely don’t want to haul 15 sopping wet towels around the outside of the house and through the garage to the laundry room. It would have taken several loads to wash that many wet towels and I have to walk up a snowy hill to get to the only door I can use to go inside the house.
The room with the water has a concrete floor. There’s a garage door he could open. I told him to sweep out as much water as he could – it wasn’t even worth getting the wet vac out. Then I mopped that area and now we have two dehumidifiers going.
Vince was determined the drain was plugged. Possibly, but with the drain hose from the water softener being 2 feet from the drain hole, that’s my first guess. He poured 6 or 8 gallons of water down the drain and it isn’t plugged.
Now, we’re going to sit downstairs, with our feet in front of us, our hands on our laps, not touch anything, not move a muscle and hope nothing else goes wrong. And, we’re going to keep our mouths shut and not talk to each other and, probably not even look at each other! 🙂
Dorothy Matheson says
Oh goodness. I guess you will be getting to the wet boxes sometime.
No do not talk to each other.
So sorry for problems already.
Cindy F says
Not the way you want to start the day! Glad it wasn’t a basement full of water! 😀 Hopefully just a little hiccup in your adventure and nothing in the boxes ruined.
Phyllis says
Am getting the feeling that these 4 weeks may end up feeling like 4 months. Keep writing, I look forward to it. You 2 sound so much like the people that live at my house. I love it!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
The paperwork the floor guy gave us said if there was an emergency, we could walk across the floors with socks on our feet after three days. Otherwise, stay off the floors for 7 days. After three weeks, we can put furniture on them but it’s best to wait a full 30 days.
I’m already thinking . . what’s the worst that can happen? But, we’ll stay off them and we’ll be very happy when we can move back upstairs.
Liz says
OK, you may want to position the wet vac in that room since it has so many water related items in there.
And, get one of those very long zip ties and attach the hose to the drain.
Finally, tell Vince he needs to find some pallets, perhaps from the “pallet store” to put under the various boxes you have in storage. A couple of inches of space can save a lot of hassle.’
Do you know what was in those boxes that got wet? I’m feeling for you….
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Liz, this isn’t our first rodeo. It isn’t the first time we’ve had basements and had leaks. It happened in Kentucky with a washing machine hose that was on the main level and it happened downstairs when a water heater in the mechanical room sprang a leak (and when I left a water hose on a faucet and the pipe froze and broke and got water in the basement). In MO the first time, Vince was out of town and the ice maker sprang a leak on the main level and got water everywhere. Then there was the water heater in the basement that Vince drained with the soaker hose.
The place we need the wet dry vac most often is in the garage (upright freezers to defrost is what we use it for most often) but having it where we can get to it when needed is most important. We could have gotten to it today but by the time we found the water, which stopped as soon as the water softener was done regenerating, the cardboard boxes had absorbed most of the water so there was no real need for the vac.
We take the cover off the drain often to pour bleach down it and to clean it so zip tying a drain hose to it would not work well.
Do not know. Do not care. (1) I haven’t seen whatever it is in over a year so I probably don’t need it. (2) There was no trash pickup last week because of the snow. Our trash can is overflowing already. (3) We’re both exhausted from moving the furniture upstairs and moving everything downstairs. The boxes are not a priority.
RuthW in MD says
Oh, I remember when Vince drained the water heater with a soaker hose…guess I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while. I wonder how long you both sat there on your hands, not talking….til the floor crew arrived, I bet. Good Luck and we’d love to read every post you have time to put up!