march showers bring april flowers

After February's furnace catastrophe, who would believe, we had yet another house-related catastrophe. The newest bane of our existence? A flooded basement. Nay, a flooded FINISHED basement. Great.

This is clearly an exaggeration, but it's sure how we felt. The first flooding (yes, more than one instance) occurred in February. It had rained heavily for two days and just as it began to snow the water appeared. The husband rushed upstairs as I was lying in bed and we spent the next several hours vacuuming up the water and preventing its spread. In all, there was about an inch of water in the utility closet and bathroom (the rooms are adjacent), with little spread in the truly finished portion. We were so fortunate MIL (mother in law) had a wet/dry vac, otherwise we don't know what we would have done...though we would find out soon enough.

After some thought and examination, we determined the water was ground water that was unable to filter down because of a frozen watertable and the saturation issues from the heavy rain. I immediately began calling local "dry basement" companies to get a sump pump installed. Since our area had been experiencing mild flooding, we only had two agencies come out to quote us, one of which never called back. Boo! We ended up contracting with Connecticut Basement Systems to come out after we returned from vacation.

So we went about enjoying our vacation (another post to follow) and just as we were readjusting to our lives back at home, another flood hit. The BIG one. We lost power for about a day, though some in our area lost power for a week+, MIL included. Wet/dry vac, we hardly knew ye. This flood covered the entire basement floor with half an inch of water, and the utility closet/bathroom had at least two inches. Amazingly we were able to pick up the water with towels and t-shirts, though it took all day. Blargh.

Connecticut Basement Systems came out about three days later and put in the sump pump. It's truly a beast. See boring picture below.

It rained heavily a few days later, and lo and behold, the sump pump works! No water AT ALL. We could hear it click on and flush out the water intermittently, so we know there was definitely the possibility of damage if we had done nothing. Eventually we'll need to rip out the bathroom... ugh.