Last week, New England became a very soggy place as the temps rose, the rain fell and the snow melted. It's amazing how quickly five feet of snow and ice turns to mud. Unfortunately, along with the promise of spring and its *slightly* warmer weather came wet basements and icky situations all around. Our situation was nowhere near as dire as that of our friend Kurt (who may or may not be the same Kurt who wrote me an encouraging email) who endured several inches of silted oppression resulting in ruined carpets, comics, boiler and a damaged water heater. He is allegedly couch surfing a week later.
We have no room to complain (and really haven't) compared to others' basement ails, but since this is a blog about my house, I feel the need to tell our "flood" story. :)
The day the rains were the worst--last Tuesday I believe--I awoke at 5:30 a.m. on a non early morning workout day to a wet pillow. I initially thought I had knocked over a glass of water in my sleep, but when I turned the light on all glasses were in their full upright position. My rustling woke Andrew who was probably pretty confused to wake up to me asking the quiet house where the water was coming from. It was coming in through the bedroom window directly above our bed. Yay.
It came in a slender stream, so I'm assuming it had been happening for awhile based on the stream size to wet area ratio. I started panicking about replacing windows, etc etc since we were supposed to get rain for another 12 hours at least. My laidback husband pretty much rolled over and reminded me that we needed to replace it anyway as he tried to go back to sleep. I, however, could not go back to sleep immediately because my pillow was slightly moistened, and the sump pump running every nine seconds interrupted my returning to REM. (Truly nine seconds. I counted. Counting sump pump intervals is about as futile as counting sheep, by the way.)
When Andrew did get up to go to work, he checked the basement which did have some leaking water...on the downward sloping side of the house...not where it should have been. He moved the few items near the seepage and left. Later investigation showed that there may have just been too much water for our pump to handle with the rain and snow melt, so the trench around the basement wall backed up causing some water to flow in. The window was more than likely accidental. We're still planning to replace the window this spring/summer.
We've had more rain since--even as I write this--but so far so good.
As I read the part where you're freaking out & laidback Andrew is basically saying, "Don't worry about it," it reminded me so much of me & Zach. I always worry; he never does. I would love to be the laidback one in a situation, just once! Love you! :)
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