My precious five-year old thanked God for watering our garden the other day. All I could think was, "I am sick of the rain." Maybe Noah was more sick than me, but maybe not.
I know the crops need it.
I know it has put water in places that have been in drought.
I know it has been so good. And I'm trying to be thankful for it. Really.
But every time it rains hard my basement floods. I'm so sick and tired of it flooding.
Here's what happened last time:
It had been raining. We'd had the wettest May on the books. June was already wet. And a tropical storm was on its way. We prepared. two sump pumps, stuff off the floor, etc.
It was VBS week at the local church, and we'd been attending all week. We had a friend coming. It was Thursday. Busy night scheduled. Son was working, we had to get to the VBS wrap up program, then rush to the airport to pick up my hubby and back to get my son from work. (One car family.) It was going to be a lot of driving and people were going to have to wait.
Then it started really raining. Hard. Just as the friend showed up, the basement started flooding. I was downstairs with a wet vac when the mom (my cousin) found me. Thirty minutes later we were ankle-deep in water trying to figure out why the pump wasn't working very well. (Clogged with a piece of cloth.) An hour later we were still working at it. Hours later we left the water to drain out the basement door and I went to pick up hubs and son who were waiting.
Enough!
We were SO done. Especially when water poured out near us as someone flushed the toilet upstairs.
Yes, you read that correctly. Water from the toilets goes into the manhole that houses the sump pump. The same pump that wasn't working well, that was full of water, overflowing with water when someone flushed. Twice. Um. STOP! They don't know. They think of a closed system with dirty water going to the city refuse collection and cleaning site. They didn't know.
Eww!
When it is dry, ours is a common, and fairly adequate system. The waste water from all over the house travels down pipes to the man hole where a super-heavy-duty sump pump with a grinder on the bottom pumps the {ahem} water to the septic tank and lateral lines. This is a normal set up. You can even buy the stuff to DIY at Lowe's.
Seriously, if that was all, we think we/it would never have a problem.
But the basement of our home was built below ground level, below the water level, deep into the bedrock. The guy who built it had to dynamite down, WAY down to get it to the level he wanted. So, knowing there would be water issues, he installed a series of drains (I think technically they are French Drains) that takes water from around the house to the same man hole for the same pump to whisk it away into the sewer system. During a light rain, no problem. You can see the water draining into the manhole from 4 little pipes and watch the pump drain it away. It is surprisingly quiet, and efficient.
I imagine this worked great for years, but over time, erosion has sloped the yard toward the house meaning more and more water rushes through that drainage system, and now, with the rains we've had, the system can't keep up.
The sump pump gets overwhelmed, and water spills over the top of the manhole. The basin outside the basement door doesn't drain, and water rushes in through the crack beneath the door. The overflow drain in the laundry room becomes a bubbling brook.
It is not pretty. 2400 feet of ankle-deep water. Muddy, ankle-deep water mixed with whatever water is flushed or drained from anywhere in the house.
And once it is gone -- it will eventually drain out, mostly -- we are left with a mess. We've never had carpet, but we had large rugs -- now we have wet concrete floors, puddles, wet doors, wet door frames, humidity, and silt. Muddy footprints and water streaks are everywhere.
Days of clean up every time. Even if the kids' rooms are clean and the school room is clean. But that isn't an everyday occurrence!
I have no idea how many, many dollars of books we've lost or how many loads of laundry I've washed because of floods. Toys ruined. Books gone. Stuff too wet or moldy to keep. Oh, the mess.
Enough!
We've been trying to stop the water.
We replaced leaking, cracked windows and fixed flashing. That stopped the leaks from rain hitting the house. But we still flooded.
We made a screen to keep stuff from falling into the manhole and clogging the sump pump. That would help it work, but it could not keep up, so we added a second pump outside in the basin. It helped, but still we flooded.
There is simply too much water going into the system. Mainly because all the way around, three to four feet away from the house, the ground slopes toward the house and there is no guttering to carry water away off the roof. Gallons of water needlessly pour toward the house with each rain, draining into the manhole, overwhelming the sump pump system.
We have to fix that particular part of the problem.
We are tackling this in two ways. The first is easy -- guttering. We called and got two estimates. Went with B&B Guttering. They were out last week and installed it. $850 well spent. We need a rain barrel for the back porch, roll-up extensions and splash pads to finish it out. It'll be about $1000 when it is all said and done, but worth it.
Additionally, we need to slope the dirt away from the house. In some places we have a chasm 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, so we have to bring in dirt. Loads and loads of dirt. We are estimating 60 cubit yards. But we have to prepare for that dirt. That means building walls and digging footings. Window wells and fun outside landscaping projects.
More on that later...
What projects are YOU doing this summer?
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