Not sure if you can tell from this photo, but that's water. A lot of water. Where it doesn't belong. It had rained for days and days, and the rural areas around Seattle were all flooded. Since we live on a hill and had a sump pump in our garage, we figured we were fine. Only it turns out our sump pump sucked. It stopped working in the night and when we woke up we found we had 6 inches of water throughout our entire garage. Here's a close up of the "flood line" after we'd bailed out the entire room:
Despite Jeff's many attempts to get the sump pump working (while I freaked out about him getting electrocuted) and other more experimental efforts to empty the room that involved physics and long hoses (which I only learned about much later), we realized that aside from purchasing a very expensive machine (of which everyone had sold out because of the extensive flooding), our only concrete option was to start bailing. We spent hours and hours bailing buckets of water out of this room and into a laundry sink in our slightly higher basement room next door. After a while the only way I was able to keep going was by pretending I was on some sort of boot camp reality show and I had to be the one girl who didn't complain. That worked for a little while, but eventually I started to whimper a little. After two days of bailing, mopping, and strategic fan operating, here is what our garage looked like after:
After that week, every time it would rain, we would have to set our alarm clocks for every 2 hours in the night and take turns waking up to check on the sump pump and make sure it had self-activated like it was supposed to. If it hadn't (which was frequently), we had a wooden broom handle we used to stick in the pool of water and activate the switch. It was like having a totally un-cute baby. But then in January we set to work and installed the biggest sump pump in the entire world. I could fit inside this sump pump it's so big. The process involved cement saws, jack hammers and a very expensive trip to the dump, but we did it. And we've been sleeping soundly ever since. This week has been VERY wet here in Seattle and we've kept nice and dry.
2 comments:
Viva la sump pump! Funny you should post this today because I was just thinking about our first night in our casa, just over two years ago. Greg had just installed the bathroom sink (which was the only functioning sink in the house at that time) and we awoke in the night to hear our dog lapping up water that was all over the bathroom floor. Good times.
I totally remember when this happened to you. I am so glad to hear that all your suffering has not been for naught. ;)
Post a Comment