It Could Be Worse, Right?

Well, today (or actually yesterday) was supposed to be another post about our trip to Washington DC, but disaster intervened.

Some time between 11:30 Saturday night and 1:00 Sunday afternoon, the sump pump in our basement blew out, resulting in hundreds of gallons of water from one end to the other.  As you may or may not know, we do have (or did have) a finished basement, which means that we had saturated carpets and water up about two inches on the drywall in some parts.  Yes, indeed, this does include the newly-finished kids’ rooms.  In fact, Charlotte’s new room is right next to the sump pump, and the water reached probably an inch-and-a-half in there.

Here are the puddles in the carpet pad in Elijah’s new room.

This is the room with the sump pump; you can see how high the water got on the wall and on the cardboard boxes of Christmas stuff stored there.

 

This is the furnace room and storage under the steps.  You can see how high the wrapped pictures in front soaked up water.

Here is standing water in the playroom, the farthest corner from the sump pump.

 

What a mess.

We had no reason to go downstairs Sunday morning before church, so we didn’t.  We ate lunch in Peoria, arrived home about 1:00, and got ready for Jeff to run to Menard’s for some toy storage stuff for the basement that was on sale through yesterday and some new light switches and outlets for Elijah’s room.  The kids practiced piano and then ran downstairs to play the Wii, their normal Sunday afternoon routine.

They ran right back up, with Charlotte shouting, “Mom!  It’s like a giant mud puddle in the basement!”  Her socks were soaked.

I ran down, saw standing water on the carpet at the base of the steps, and realized what had happened.  I ran back up to stop Jeff from going to Menard’s.

Sure enough…the circuit had blown on the sump pump.  The last few days, we had had non-stop rain and temperatures near the forties.  This caused the six inches of the snow on the ground to melt, and evidently the ground had thawed just enough to overwhelm the pump.

(In a cruel irony, we got two new inches of snow and below-freezing temperatures back today.)

To make a long story short, I called our insurance company, and Jeff dashed to Menard’s to get a new sump pump, which he installed immediately, and two friends from small group showed up with a giant vacuum after I had posted a pitiful status report on Facebook.  These two guys, Mike Fiedler and Von Pugh, stayed at our house until after 9:00 last night, emptying our basement of stuff, pulling up carpet, hauling out the saturated carpet pad, and sucking up water.

We owe them a steak dinner.  At the very least.

I took the kids over to Mike’s house, where his gracious wife let me and the kids hang out for a few hours, as I could be very little help in the basement.  When I got back home, I spent a couple hours in the garage, emptying out ruined cardboard boxes.

Here is the current state of our basement.

 

To make the rest of a long story short…

We actually lost very little.  All of my notes and folders from graduate school are ruined, as are some college textbooks and some board games.  The kids lost or had damaged some Pokémon, Bakugan, and Webkinz cards, and many picture frames were damaged. 

However, I was able to remove most of the items in the frames before they could be damaged, as the cardboard backing and mats took the water first.  I thought that I had lost my wedding dress, but it ended up being wrapped in plastic inside the cardboard box, so I think it’s OK.  The only scrapbook that was damaged was one I had done of a trip to England and France in high school, and only two pages were really messed up.

This morning, Jeff rented three industrial dehumidifiers to try to suck the remaining moisture out of the basement.  We are hopeful that we can get the drywall and insulation dry and that repairs to those can be kept to a minimum.  As far as the carpet, we may just replace that, but we’ll see.

The silver lining?  Jeff had a rider put on our insurance for sump pump failure and water damage when we moved back, so we are insured up to $5,000 with a fairly low deductible.  The adjuster comes tomorrow afternoon.  Also, we spent the weekend looking at but not buying carpet and furniture for the kids’ new rooms.  When I think about how bad it would be if Jeff had actually finished this project on my ridiculous original schedule?  Wow.

And compared to, say, people in Haiti, this is barely a blip.

Nevertheless, I can’t quite wrap my mind around this mess yet, but the kids sort of enjoyed it.  A few comments…

Charlotte:  “Wow!  I’ve never been in a flood before!”

Charlotte and Elijah, as they high step and splash through the water:  “Can we play in the water rooms?

Charlotte:  “Man!  I can’t get my rubber duck to float!”

Elijah:  “This flood kind of stinks.  We won’t get to play Wii for a long time!”

Take deep breaths, Heatharlyne.  Take deep breaths.

Anyway, this, too, shall pass.  And it shall pass, with any luck, before this baby shows up in 11 weeks. 

I’ll keep you posted.