Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
The Great Flood of Aught-Seven!
You may have been aware that this last weekend, there was record rainfall in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, we got just over 5 inches of rain in a 24 hour period on Monday. It was gushing.
In my house, where I've lived since mid-2000, the most dampness I've ever seen in the basement was a thimble's worth of water after a ridiculously heavy rainstorm. The garage occasionally gets a little water across the floor, but it's never very bad. So, I really wasn't that worried, since at the time, it was just heavy rain, not "record rainfall."
On Monday, I was scheduled to fly to San Jose for business. I would fly out in the afternoon, so I packed up my bags the night before, and headed out Monday morning to load up the Xtracycle. It was raining hard, which I was glad of, since it had cleared up any chance of the snow from Saturday being an issue on the bike.
I opened the door to the garage, and was greeted by the sight of 75% of the floor sitting under a half inch of water. Not a big deal, really, since there's very little in the garage that can be damaged by water. I kind of giggled about it, just because it was so unusual. I picked up a few things I'd rather not soak in water (because they might rust), and loaded the bike. The bags got wrapped in plastic bags, and I was fully kitted out in my rain cape and spats.
It was a wet ride in to work, but amazingly, I arrived with only the faintest dampness about me, and my bags totally dry. I was pretty pleased about that.
However, as the day wore on, I found myself worrying more and more about the basement of my house, which I'd neglected to check before I left in the morning -- I had just installed new carpet earlier this year to "help sell the house," and there were a bunch of boxes stacked up waiting to be unpacked. Finally, at lunch time, I couldn't bear the uncertainty: could I really fly to San Jose for half a week when my house might be knee-deep in water? Answer: no. So I borrowed Kristin's car, and drove up to the house.
I walked in, and thought, "Well, the upstairs doesn't look particularly damp," figuring I'd at least see some condensation on the windows if there were really water in the basement. Of course, by my clever, bludgeon-like foreshadowing, you know what I found.
The basement was indeed wet. Far wetter than I had ever expected, but not particularly "flooded." The carpet was sopping wet, but there was only about a square foot of carpet where I could see actual standing water. With far more under-the-breath swearing than was strictly necessary, I set about getting all the boxes up off the ground. I had one of those wire baker's racks sitting disassembled nearby, so the shelves became spacers to keep boxes off the wet carpet. Other boxes were moved to drier parts of the basement -- the water seemed to be coming in at one corner, and spreading from there.
My new storage room (full up with shelves) was fortunately dry, so at least I didn't have to move stuff in there. So was the to-be music room, although I still picked up the various instruments and put them on tables and chairs. The only thing worse than a German plywood cello would be a sopping wet German plywood cello (in my cello's defense, I really like the tone of it, it's just made with the wrong glue).
Having run out of wire shelves, I clumsily unfolded the clever folding ladder I have, and laid it out on the ground so I could stack boxes on it. This was actually much harder than I make it sound, since I foolishly first tried to unfold it in a room which was too small, and had to (after numerous grunting, swearing false starts) fold it back up and move it out to the big central room of the basement. I finally got it folded out, and boxes set up on it.
I now had all the boxes off the wet carpet, but the carpet was still soaking wet. I ran out to the garage, and grabbed the shop vac (a 10-gallon model -- this will be important later), which can safely vacuum up water. I even managed to locate the "squeegee attachment" to the shop vac, which I'd decided long ago I'd never use. Hah!
Then it was down to the squishy carpet. Earmuffs on. Vacuum power, and suck! I probably spent an hour energetically squeegee-ing the carpet with the vacuum running, and managed to make a visible difference in the carpet -- I got it several shades lighter, and by the time I was done, it was much better. Still wet to the touch, but no longer making squish-squish noises as I walked on it. I was sweating up a storm between the squeegee action and the warm, humid environment, but I'd made good progress. I emptied out the 2-3 gallons I'd sucked up, and mentally prepared a journal post about the huge, anticlimactic Great Flood of Aught-Seven. Time to go back to work!
Back to work I went. Finally finishing up around 7, I headed back home. I'd cancelled the trip to San Jose, even though it looked like I'd solved the immediate problem. I figured I still needed to unpack the dampened boxes to prevent mold, and although I had a bunch of fans running over the carpet at home, I really wanted to get a heater to put down there to help accelerate the drying.
I checked on the basement once I got home, and it looked much as I'd left it. I hopped in the awful minivan and headed to the store to get an electric heater. I wanted one for the garage anyway, so I didn't mind spending the twenty bucks.
I got home from my shopping trip, heater in hand, and unpacked the little metal appliance. I traipsed down the stairs, ready to plug it in and start unpacking boxes. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the light downstairs to discover a huge patch of standing water!
More cursing. Earmuffs. Squish-squish over to the vacuum, plug it back in. Power. Suck! I will say this: sucking up standing water is much more gratifying -- you can see the results immediately. Every 10 or 20 minutes, I'd lug the half-full body of the vacuum out to the back yard and dump it out toward the drainage ditch beyond the fence.
From 8:30 that night until midnight, I spent 15 of every 30 minutes sucking up water in the basement. Well, I took a break, but not a good one...
I decided to look outside, and see what kind of awful puddle must be leaning against the foundation to produce such a copious flow of water. I got out there, and found... nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but no visible water. I found a bizarre 3" concrete pipe poking up out of the ground, broken off many years ago at an angle. I shone a flashlight into the pipe, and saw water. Hmm... I looked again. In fact, that water was moving... Hmmm!
I trudged back inside, threw an extension cord out a nearby window, and lugged the shop-vac down to the little pipe. Earmuffs. Power. Suck! With a little jiggling, I was able to get all of the vacuum hose, some light, and some vision down the pipe, and I could see that I was making progress, removing some of the water from whatever it was (I later determined with the help of my dad that it was probably a perimeter drain). At this point, the vacuum seemed to get less effective. It occurred to me that it might be full, so I turned it off, and checked. Sure enough.
Now, allow me to paint a picture for you. It's about 10 pm, dark, with rain that changes between persistent drizzle and torrential downpour about as fast as a kid with ADD switches video games. I'm standing in the five-foot-wide strip of land that separates my house from the next house to the north. The ground is uneven, with some clever previous owner of my house having stacked up low piles of paving stones near the house, which have since become covered over with grass and weeds. There is a 5" tall, 1" diameter stump where my neighbor cut off some aspiring tree, right in the middle of the obvious path down the middle of the strip. My exit from this strip of ankle-twisters is a narrow passageway between my deck and a prickly holly tree, perhaps three feet wide.
I'm standing there, probably steaming slightly in the rain, looking down at the body of a 10 gallon shop-vac, which is full of drecky water I just sucked out of a mysterious hole in the ground next to my house. Water weighs about 8 pounds per gallon. And it sloshes. Yes, I now have to carry an 80 pound, sloshing vat of disgusting water through this dark minefield. I could dump it right there, oh yes, but it would just soak into my basement, or the basement of the next house (which is much deeper than mine). The only choice seemed to be to lug this awful, heavy thing out to the street and dump it there, far from houses.
So, I did. It was about as awful as you can imagine. I only sloshed evil on myself once, and managed to not break any bones in the process, but there were a couple of iffy moments. I did the same thing several more times, but at least I was clever enough to not fill the vacuum completely full, afterwards. 40 pounds of water is much easier to carry. I found that my stopping point was pointed out when the vacuum started blowing a billowing jet of steam. That seemed like a bad thing, so I'd switch it off and go empty the bucket.
I did a few more rounds of this before it became clear that I was attempting to vacuum up all groundwater, 5 gallons at a time. It wasn't a winning proposition, so I went back inside to deal with the stuff that got past my foundation wall. Some time around 10:45, I took a break to eat a quick dinner.
By the time midnight rolled around, the incoming water seemed to have dropped off, and by 12:30 I was feeling confident enough that I could go to bed without awaking to find a foot of water in the basement.
Tuesday was better. I spent an hour in the morning, slowly running the vacuum over sections of carpet. There's a magic angle, at which the vacuum head is really effective (I assume this is the angle where the opening is flat on the ground, so the only way to get air in is via the carpet). Using the magic angle, I was again able to get the carpet shades lighter, but it was slow, uncomfortable work, since it also required that I put weight on the end of the vacuum, which had me bending over in an awkward posture.
I'd have to stop after 5-7 minutes of vacuuming, as the air outlet would start spitting droplets of water that were making it past the filter, although it didn't start steaming again. Tuesday night saw an encore performance with the vacuum, but I knocked off after a couple minutes, since I wasn't really collecting any water to speak of.
That is, so far, the end of the story. Between the fans and the heater, the carpet is now dry to the touch, and I was confident enough this morning that I switched off the heater, although I left the fans running. I unpacked a couple of boxes last night, but apparently I acted fast enough, and everything inside was dry. If we get more record-breaking rain, I'll see more water in the basement, but it's apparent that I don't have to worry about lots of water. I am going to be contacting a contractor about the perimeter drain and waterproofing the foundation.
Considering the awful damage that these storms wrought elsewhere around the state, I got off very lightly. I-5 is still closed, with 6-7 feet of water over the road surface at Chehalis. Countless thousands of basements are under many feet of water. There are no sump pumps to be found in any retail outlet or rental agency anywhere in Seattle, or presumably most other places in the state. So my carpet got damp, big deal!
At least, in the end, it makes for an interesting story....
Posted at 11:19 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater