Well, at least that was the case last night! It rained, HARD, here last night. The interesting thing was that it seriously looked like someone was dumping huge bucketfuls of water out of the sky. Just look at the kids' play area, the mulch was actually pushed over the wood perimeter and onto the sidewalk:
This was not your average hard, steady rain. This was like sheets of water just pouring out of the sky. Puddles and puddles of water throughout the yard and on the sidewalk. It didn't last too long either, maybe an hour.
I was on the phone with my BFF, Jenn, until midnight last night. After we got off the phone I was so ready for bed, so I let
Angus out one last time and as I was ready to head to bed I thought, 'I better check the basement. Wouldn't it be something if we got water down there?' Yea, it sure was something.
OhMyGawd! Okay, calm down, Lisa...(easier said than done). I mean, I seriously felt tears well up in my eyes. I sent CJ a text message asking him to call me - he was at work. I wait like 3 minutes, no call. I went upstairs and logged onto Yahoo IM to contact him that way and he replied that he was on an escalation (talking to a pissed off customer) so he was unable to call me at that moment. I wanted to type back
WE HAVE WATER IN OUR BASEMENT!!! - but I thought that would not be a good thing to do to him as he was on a call. So I waited, for what felt like hours. I'm not sure what I thought calling him would do. Nothing he can do while he's at work.
I told him and he asked me if the sump pump was working. As far as I could tell it was, but I'm no expert so I suppose at that moment he felt the sudden urge to come home. Thankfully he was able to find coverage for his team at work and come home. We used our mini wet/dry vacuum and got a ton of the water up. We also used our
ShamWows and internet, I am not even kidding, those suckers worked! We soaked up so much water with them! (No, this is not a paid post for ShamWow) So we got most of the water up and went to bed around 2:30 am - let me tell you, 7 am comes quick - I feel like a zombie.
The bad news: we got water in our basement
The good news: we do have a water management system in place that works 99% of the time. Since 2005, when we had it put in, there was only one other time we got some water in the basement - in the same spot no less.
Here's how it's supposed to work: the water IS still supposed to come in through the brick walls and it trickles down to an irrigation system that routes the water through the basement (along the bottom of the wall) to the sump pump where it is pumped out. If we did not allow water to still come in, it would fill up inside the brick walls and one day BAM! an explosion of brick and water from the pressure build up. What we think happened is that the water came in like a wave - too much too fast and the irrigation system got overwhelmed. It's really the only explanation - the corner that got wet is the corner that is the known problem area (before we had the basement water managed, like I said, since we've had it done we've only seem some water once). The pump is working fine so we can't think of any other reason that this happened.
The walls are dry - When we finished the basement, we did NOT put the drywall against the brick. In fact, we used metal tracking and studded the walls out about 3-4 inches away from the walls for this very reason. The brick walls are able to breathe and if they get wet, the drywall won't and the tracking is metal so no warped wood. I am so freaking glad we did that!
Our carpet will be fine - this time. The damage was actually very minimal, really no worse than having the carpets shampooed by a crappy shampooer - you know, the ones that don't suck up enough water and so after shampooing the carpet stays wet for hours? Thankfully we chose office grade carpet so its easy to clean and we have more carpet and padding if we'd have to replace it.
Today CJ is going to call the place that did the water management for us since we have a lifetime warranty with them, he wants to hear what they have to say, maybe they can give us more insight as to what happened.
If this should happen again - which I am sure it will, we just may rip the carpet up in that area and put tile down. That way water will be much easier to clean up.
It's a nice little sitting area and I think tile with a throw rug would look just fine, what do you think?
I called him back and I was like, "Dude, meet me half way, I don't want to drive into this!" and he's all "Hell No! There is a tornado warning right now and the clouds are so low that I've been seeing cloud to ground lightning! I'm not going out in this!" Niiice...okay, so me and the 3 kids will just drive into a tornado warning area.
It took an eternity to get to Jeff's but we made it safely. I dropped Olivia off and turned right around to come home. At that time I was basically following the storm. Gee, what I have always wanted to be, a 'storm chaser' - NOT!
Libras need some semblance of balance in their lives but can be knocked off balance by the burdens of emotional or physical attachments either of themselves or others. Now, the need for routine? I'm not so sure but I do know that this Libra does!
It's raining and I am freaking out a little inside. Cross your fingers and toes and whatever else you can cross that this will not be a repeat of last week...
I will have more about this on my Family Disney Vacations blog - I'll get into the details regarding making a purchase, the pros and cons and other things that pertain to making such a huge decision.
Hey everyone, look for your party invitations in the mail because me thinks there's a party going on in Ryan's pants!
Over the last year or so, I have been helping a few friends plan weddings and bridal/baby showers. It got to be so much that I even created a blog - 'Weddings, Showers and More' to notate all the ideas I had.
