My personal swimming pool.

This week started off with a new adventure. It’s called flooding in your basement. For anyone who has not had the pleasure of this experience, count your lucky stars. This was one of those lessons that you wake up one morning and learn without warning.

I, per usual this week, was running slightly behind in getting ready for work. I hopped out of bed, had 20 minutes to get ready and out the door, I can do this! That was until I opened the door to my basement. First thought, what’s that hissing sound? Is it a snake? No, it’s louder than that. It’s coming from the laundry room, which is cool, I’m going down here for socks anyway… is that water? Yes, yes is. And it’s….. oh, everywhere. Where in the world is it coming from? I’m going to guess the same place as the noise, the water heater.

Yes, that is correct, the water heater, at some point from yesterday’s exploration to find socks to the next, had sprung a leak and had covered my basement floor.

First call I made was to Pop to find out how to turn the heater off. He told me the valves on top of the water heater. I tried, badly, to move them. They didn’t budge. I blame my lack of hand strength. So I did the next best thing, found the valve that turns all the water in the house off. Pop said he’d call a plumber so my next concern was getting the water up/out of the house. To make sure I had more than 20 minutes to do that, I called my boss and was like water heater broke, flooded the basement, I’m going to be late. He said that was fine. So now I went from room to room, the basement is divided in 3 rooms, and had to figure out how far the water went and started to move things onto higher or just further back places to keep them dry. Some things I moved with care like lamps, chairs, and dressers, and other less so, like dog cages and suit cases. Once that was complete, I started to squeegee the floors.

I learned a couple of things in that hour and half of scraping water into the drain or out the door. 1. Those drains in the middle of floors really do have a purpose. 2. Cement basement floors, though are cold, are excellent for using a squeegee. 3. I have no idea where the squeegee came from but it’s has worked wonders with snakes and floods. 4. I apparently had a dead lizard in one of the rooms. Gross. I sent the dead lizard out the door verse trying to pick it up or shove it down the drain. 5. If you turn all the water off in the house and use the restroom you will not be able to get the soap off your hands no matter how many sinks you try. 6. When concentrating on getting water out of the house you don’t hear people approaching. I was just working away when the plumber showed up. He scared the crap out of me. I yelled in surprise, he apologized, I waited 10 minutes for my heart to stop trying to break through my chest walls. Man! That freaked me out.  

The good news, I was able to get most of the water out in about 1.5 hours, the plumber had come by and gotten the old tank out so I was able to switch the water back on and take a cold shower and made it work. I had to work both jobs, so it was late by the time I was able to come back home and finish with the rest of the watery mess.

Still determined to get the rest of the water out of the basement, I came home from working both job and went back into my swamp.  The last part I had to work on was the partially finished section. We had placed  a carpet on one side of the room to make that area less cold for your feet. Luckily, this carpet and it’s padding was not stapled or glued down. It was, however, acting like a giant sponge. It was so wet that when I had walked on it, I had left a trail of foot prints all over the rug. I had to get it out. I was worried about it causing mold and mildew. Plus, the dampness would never get out of the basement it left unattended.  I started by getting the last remaining furniture, two twin beds, taken apart and moved to a new dryer location.

It was about this time my good friend, I shall call her Sweetheart for privacy, came over with a shock vacuum to help with the water.  There were a few failed attempts where we used  the shock vacuum to try and suck the water out of the carpet. It was not working and it was late and I didn’t want to go rent a carpet cleaning. We figured that would also be an excellent way to remove the water. So we decided we should roll the carpet and padding up and hang them off my porch. This was easier said than done, only because it was so heavy. Not only was it awkward to carry but the water kept racing out all over the basement, myself, and the steps. After a few jokes about my water breaking we hauled the carpet up and over the railing.

The second step we removed the carpet padding. We thought about trying to just cut the wet parts away from the dry parts since no one sees under the carpet anyway. However, instead of cutting the padding it was just being torn all to pieces. We left it attached and haul this large sponge up off the color to be carried to the porch and thrown over the railing. Repeat this step one more time and the basement was now carpet and carpet padding less. Water was again, all over the floor. With Sweetheart’s help 20 minutes later, the basement was puddle free, had two fans blowing on the floor, and a dehumidifier going at full blast.

So, if an entire basement can be in that much trouble in just a few hours, imagine, if you’re gone for a few days what time of time, effort, energy, and money it will cost to clean that up. If you leave town, please, please, turn off your water!