Where's The Flood? Oh, It's In The Basement

Yep that's right, the basement flooded. When? I wanna say Sunday night into Monday morning. We were having a lazy Sunday while all it did outside all day was rain so it could have happened at any time since neither of us bothered to go downstairs. The thought of laundry was enough to cause a headache and since Jimmy was planning on being home Monday I figured I'd pawn it off to him.

Monday morning between 8-9 I was to call the local alarm inspector to see when our window of time was for him to come out and inspect our alarm. It was between 9:30 and 10. He showed up at 9:30 and took about 15 minutes. At about 9:45 Jimmy decided to do laundry. That's when he noticed the carpet in the basement was wet. That's when the snowball started.

He got towels and got as much water up as possible, I got on the phone with the insurance company and that turned out to make that snowball bigger and bigger. Jimmy drove up to my mom's house to pick up her carpet shampooer which sucks out water from carpet and he spent most of the day doing that. I spent most of the day yelling and wanting to cry. I got ahold of my mom and she and my dad later drove out to my house with a dehumidifyer to help draw out some of the moisture. My dad tried to help Jimmy unclog the drain that's in the cement on the other side of the basement door leading to the steps outside. No luck there. That's when it was time to call a plumber.

By the time I got home the plumber was about a half hour behind me. He showed up and got to work. To no avail. The snake wasn't reaching the sump pump. No good. Turns out there's no pipe going from the drain to the pump which is why with all the rain we've had it's just been clogged with mud and no where to drain. So when we get constant rain like we did all day Sunday, the concrete pad just filled with rain and it ran into the house, over the tile, and soaked up into the carpet.

Enter a huge nightmare.

The plumber was so super nice about it. I guess if you're the bearer of bad news you get to be really good at it and bring it in a nice way.

So his recommendation was to have a new pipe installed, dig a trench and run it to the sump pump and that wouldn't be cheap and it would dig up our foundation, our door frame and threshold, our flooring and probably a wall and door frame inside the house as well. And BTW you'd have to call a mason and a carpenter to have those things fixed. Good times. Snowball is now pretty fricking huge, if you're keeping track. In fact, it's probably so big it could knock you over.

Keep in mind, I still haven't heard from my insurance company, why, well because they thought I was in an apartment. Right. I own a house. We own a house. They had me down as having a car policy (yep, I do) and a home owners policy (which we do, and we just renewed and repaid through the MORTGAGE company/Escrow) and a renter's policy (which we terminated a year ago). Snowball. So more on this later.

So last night the plumber left at around 9:30 I believe. Then I had to make dinner and it was my turn to start sucking up water with the shampooer. Good times. And have I mentioned that it is super hot in the basement and muggy and smells like wet nasty carpet? GROSS.

So this morning Jimmy was staying home. The plumbing company was sending someone to give an estimate on the work between 9-10, they showed at like 10:30. Turns out we're going to install a 2nd sump pump instead of digging a 20 foot drench but we'll still have them dig up flooring and bust thru the foundation and threshold so we can save about $500 and they can save some labor and time. Snowball in theory, in theory mind you, just got a bit smaller.

I then called around about the carpet. I really didn't want to replace carpet the is less than a year old. I called Stanley Steamer, the company where the dog Toby drags it's ass across the carpet like Peanut does. Good times. Makes me laugh. They don't in person on the phone. They put me on hold and gave me the number to a new company to call because when they asked me if it started to smell I said yes. So I called the new company and they said they'd charge me $150 to come do an estimate to see if I needed to have the carpet, padding and dry wall ripped out, but oh yeah, they don't repair or replace any of that. What kind of crap is that? So I said yes. At this point, $150 to tell me if my carpet is jacked up is fine with me.

Ok so Jimmy's finishing up with the plumbing people and I'm about to have an aneurysm with all this crap going on. I finally couldn't take it anymore and called my mom and asked if she could call in the insurance company and see what was up. Turns out our claim guy was preparing to go on vacation but he was just about to call me with the name and number of a company to come look at the carpet. RIGHT. The bullshit snowball is now forming. It's stinky. So within minutes of getting off the phone with my mom this company calls me and are going to be on their way to my house late afternoon early evening. Great.

I then call the other company who wanted to rip out my drywall and cancel. Saved $150. Snowball slightly smaller. So at about 1 or so I get a call from another guy from this company about the carpet and he says he'll be there between 2 and 2:30, even better. At this point I tell Jimmy to stop using the shampooer and not to worry about it. What I am worried about is the looming threat of rain for tonight.

The carpet people showed up at 3 and ended up ripping up a corner of the carpet, shoving a fan up underneath of it and are blowing air onto the padding to allow it to dry. They've left a gigantic heater of some sort down there to dry it out and suck out moisture. Our basement's at about 50% humidity and should be less than 30%. They don't think we'll need to replace the carpet or padding which is good news but we won't know for certain until they come back tomorrow and check it and even then they might not know until Thursday when they come back again once it's 100% dry under there. Snowball melted a tiny bit.

Oh and then there's a random spot on the carpet by the wall that's all rust colored. The guy from the carpet company said it could be a leak from the foundation causing it and suggested we get a foundation inspection and then have the foundation sealed. Great. Snowball bigger now. Another problem for another day.

So in the meantime my carpet looks like its a huge bubble.

The plumbers will be here tomorrow to dig up my basement.

And about that threat of rain tonight. It's just "passing thunderstorms" according to the forecast but if you look at the front page of www.weather.com they also tell you that there's a severe threat of flooding for drought ravaged DC. Snowball is now like an avalanche because rain is what caused all this damn drama in the first place.

So we went to the store and bought 3 60 pound bags of sand and a tarp and then to Target and got 12 2.5 gallon sized bags and sat on our deck and made sand bags. 12 total. And we are going to line the inside of the door in the basement with towels and just keep an eye on the sky. If it starts to rain we'll go check it out. Hopefully it won't.

So pray that we don't get any rain tonight and tomorrow while they're working, pray that the plumbers will move all the sandbags tomorrow and that I don't have to, pray that this won't cost us too much money and the insurance will cover most of it and pay us back quickly for what we're paying for up front ourselves and pray for us that this doesn't happen ever again.

AMEN.