Flooded basement
 

There were were, Mrs tonrob and I, undergoing final preparations for a long weekend jaunt to Philadelphia, when Mrs tonrob announces that the suitcase I chose a few days ago for the trip isn't big enough and we need the seriously big one.

So there I go, trotting down to the basement, with such momentum that I am unable to halt my progress before splashing into the 500 gallons of murky water that wasn't there last time I looked.

Bugger.

Turns out most of my street had this happen to them after a few days of record-breaking heavy rain.

So off I trotted to a local equipment rental place to rent a little pump thingy that cleared all the standing water in just a couple of hours. But here's the thing - even though the rain had stopped hours ago and now the sun was finally out, the water was still oozing in at an alarming rate.

We have a sump pump, which had clearly failed to do its duty so the rental pump (which has no on/off float switch thingy) is sat in the sump well and I'm there switching it on every time the water gets to the top. Cue a night of sleeping on the sofa with the alarm of my phone waking me every hour, on the hour, so I can go check the basement and pump as needed to avoid a further flood.

The next day I got my arse down to Home Depot sharpish to view the wide array of sump pumps they didn't have in stock on account of every flucker wanting one right now. Amazingly, and despite the helpful advice of the staff that I wouldn't find one for a month, I actually found a suitable unit, almost out of view on a high shelf that I was able to tease off with my fingertips while stood on tiptoes. This was a find, as I'd been told that everything had been shipped off to stores in Rhode Island (which I'm given to understand is almost completely under water in case you're thinking of going there soon) where they had sold 10,000 units over the last few days.

I am not a plumber, but I also didn't fancy my chances of been able to hire one any time soon, so one quick Youtube instructional video later and I managed to install the thing to replace the old one in under an hour. And it bloody worked!

I shudder to think what would have happened if Mrs tonrob hadn't wanted to take all of those extra shoes. We would have returned from a 4-day break during which temperatures had soared into the balmy 70s, warming up the filthy swimming pool that would have been sitting for all that time in our basement.

Our house is on a flat street, not at the bottom of a hill or anywhere near a stream or river. All it took to flood the basement was rain.

The moral of this story is check your sump pump regularly. I can't believe how catastrophic consequences could be over the failure of a $100 pump.

Re: Flooded basement
 

Well done that man! :thumbup:

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Thank you. To say that I was chuffed with myself would be an understatement. I am now looking for new things to plumb. My goal is a toilet in every room by the summer.

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Fixed it for ya! :D

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What a domestic hero. Seriously!

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I think that may be the best fix I've seen here on BE! :rofl:

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I am not a cat. :frown:

Edit: I did pee out of the window once, but I was very, very drunk and couldn't find the bedroom door.

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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Friend of mine once came home (still living with mother) from the pub very, very drunk. She'd just had new carpets put in, including in the bathroom. He thought he was going to be sick.

Next morning the bathroom carpet was found not very neatly rolled up in the bath. The good news was, he hadn't been sick on it.

Re: Flooded basement
 

A workmate of my dad's was well-known as a piss artist. The two scenarios that stick in my mind were his wife waking in the early hours to a bit of a kerfuffle in the kitchen. Found him stood on the draining board pissing into the kitchen sink.

The other was her embarking upon a spot of hoovering the next day and finding the vacuum cleaner clogged with the puke he'd tried to suck up off the carpet the night before...

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I'd hate to be in the Northeast right now and one of the people that have government flood insurance. Before the Easter recess, the republicans (Jim Bunning again) held up the new jobs bill which contained an extension of government flood insurance beyond April 1.

Therefore people with government flood insurance may not have flood insurance.

Re: Flooded basement
 

What a star, my DH FIXED a leaking tap which resulted in 12 hours with no water, as much on the floor as you seem to have had in the basement, and me entering a wet not T shirt but head to foot competition, oh and it still dripped!

I'd buy you a big bag of sprouts for that, and you can NEVER take too many shoe's anywhere, this should serve to teach all men why we need them :rofl:

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Our other house that is empty (apart from the stuff in storage in the basement) just had a burst pipe, 600,000 gallons of water filled the basement.
Still trying to get all the stuff out of there, nasty, nasty mold everywhere.

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Jesus that's nasty. We had a bit of a mould problem about a year after moving in. Sorting that, plus getting some asbestos insulation off some heating pipes at the same time saw off five grand for our little basement.

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What's a sump pump?

Honestly, where do you people live? The rest of the US sounds like a 3rd world country from reading this board. I just hope the rest of you rabble don't move to where I live. You know, where it rains 80% of the year but I still have no idea what a sump pump is?

:lol::lol:

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Yes of course I know what a freakin' sump pump is, before someone forgets their sarcastic meter.

Congratulations on your new plumbing career!

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Careful, or I'll re-direct your sump pump and turn your toilet into a bidet. I have the skills.

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Watch it, sprout boy.. so do I. :wub:
(we really don't have a sump pump, even though we have a basement!)

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I'm from the land of 10,000 lakes and I have never heard of a sump pump. You may have been kidding but I'm not.

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Not sure about that framing. You want a couple of jack studs in that doorway, for starters... ;)

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Oops, too late. :)

I'm sure they are in there. But Wanda wanted to say 'hi'!

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yikes! You should be buying the missus some more shoes to thank her methinks :)

Well done though!

And I know all about mouldy basements...unfortunately :(




While we're sharing drunken toilet stories :ohmy: an ex of mine once woke up to the sight of his parents and their horrified friends staring at him. They had returned home and walked in their lounge to find him with his trousers down sitting in their armchair, but with the seat cushion pushed back as if it was a toilet seat lid. :eek:
Luckily he had passed out before doing anything!!

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Excellent! Miaow! to Wanda. :)

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Impressed with Tonrob's plumbing skills. Better than my husband's - he redid the pipes under the floor in the bathroom, then put down a lovely tiled floor, then installed the new toilet. Then flushed the toilet only to hear the combi-boiler fire up...

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:eek:

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I've never heard of government flood insurance... wonder if we have it?

We pay extra on the house insurance for flood damage because our house is built in a dip in a granite ledge. Our sump pump is constantly going - I hate to think what would happen if it failed.

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Like everything to do with insurance, private insurance companies don't want to insure people if there is a significant risk that they will collect. So if anyone lives in a flood plain or any area that has a significant risk of flooding, private insurance companies usually won't insure them.

So the government sells flood insurance for people in those types of areas.

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I was reading about back-up pumps you can get: either battery or (would you believe it) water-powered. Could be worth looking into, especially if a bad storm coincided with a power outage.

There were also set-ups that could sound an alarm, or even text your phone (can't remember exactly where I read that last bit or how it worked).

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We have a battery backup for our sump.

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http://www.fema.gov/business/nfip/

Flood insurance underwritten by the government is available for almost any property provided the community it's located in participates in the NFIP.

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Don't you just love the interwebs?

Good deal on getting that sorted, it could have been a nightmare.

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Hmm -- wood lath? Curiously, our old 1941 house had wood lath, but the 1939 one we own has gypsum "button board" lath.

Most of houses of our vintage have a "California" [e.g. small, not full] basement. As standard practice, the concrete was poured with a hold for the sump. My niece's house in the flats has a very high water table and the slightest rain, the sump pump starts going. Our house has the sump -- but it is filled in with sand and no pump -- no problem. Houses a block way -- have those pumps and need them. Location, Location, Location.

BTW, do you have a "backflow" valve in the "black water" outlet line for your house? [Assuming you are hooked up to a sewer system].

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I agree that jack studs would have been a good idea. However, given the fact that it is not a load bearing wall, probably could have gotten away with it.

We were our own contractor on our kitchen remodel. Unfortunately, we had an unexpected change in the framing regarding removal of a wall due to the fact that the ceiling joists were framed 90 degrees from normal which meant we were removing a load bearing wall -- oops! We built using the LA City "Type 51" sheet of standard specs and left it open for the inspector to see. Mr. Parisi says "type 51" ain't appropriate here, get seismic engineering. So we did. [messing up the budget by $750 -- but we had build a fudge factor into our costing].

Problem was that we needed a 4 x 4 post to replace the king stud and the layout meant we needed to eliminate the jack stud! Engineer replaced the need for a jack study by use of the appropriate Simpson Strong Tie and it passed!

Framing is wonderful.

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We have a water powered backup pump. Took my brain a while to understand how water could be used to get rid of...water.

The 'warning' setups rely on electricity, so will not help when it fails, unless you also have a generator covering the various components needed to send the alarm/email, in which case the need for the alarm reverts just to when the pump fails...

I'm paranoid about water. Pernicious stuff. And I really like the idea of using water to defeat water! :thumbsup:

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The alarm system to my house has this little off-the-shelf component called a motor-cycle battery.

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Especially if "black" water is involved. Backflow valves are often to be recommended in flood areas. Environmental remediation of black water contamination ain't easy.

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If I understand that correctly, then sure, that works. The trouble with the emailing devices is that there are usually several components.

- The device itself, which is generally in the basement, and needs electricity.
- The router to which it connects and which it needs to send out an email.
- The cable (or whatever) device that the ISP connection needs.

In my house they are in three different places and supplying power to all 3, to enable such a system, would have meant batteries everywhere! Too many points of failure for my liking...

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The control box is in an upstairs closet along with the wireless router. The system connects to the monitoring people via telephone land line and celluar router.

The system that was in place when we bought the house was quite old and was a single circuit perimeter system operated by a Medico key. There were four switches -- two outside and one on each floor. They are still there along with two red "panic" buttons! Since it would have a hassle to repair the walls where they were, we have simply left them in place. Several house guests have wondered about the red button and I dare them to push it! However, we do show the real control panel and give them the guest code.

Back to that old alarm -- our house was a bank "REO" -- and we did a lot of work just to get the house liveable. The dining room bay double hung windows not only were alarmed, they were also barred -- AND -- there were pressure pads under the carpet! [We removed the carpet and there was beautiful hardwood underneath]. Is there a triplicate version of "belts and braces?"

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Did you check the yard for land mines? :unsure: