Sunday, March 09, 2008

The rain

Yesterday was one of miserable weather days we can all do without. We have a 20" base of snow and all Friday night and Saturday it poured buckets of rain. About 4PM we took a look in the basement and said "oh, oh". We have a typical basement for an antique home in New England, dirt floor and a granite foundation. And usually the water flows in and out in a very short time. It has never flooded for us since we have lived here. But the frozen ground trapped the rain and the waters were a risin'! We set up the only sump pump we had and within an hour it was clearly not keeping up. Thankfully when we renovated the place our plumber had the forsight to build a new pad for the furnace so it was in the high spot of the cellar. That decision paid off ten fold.

So off we went to Home Depot at 5PM, bought a pump that would push 1750 gals and hour through a 1" hose! We got back at 6PM only to find the package was missing the hose adaptor! So back to Home Depot. We got the pump going by 6:45 and at 9:30 the waters had receded. Thankfully the rain had stopped around 8PM. At Home Depot there were a few of us huddled around the sump pump section making our decisions and a man we know arrived to buy his third pump! He too, owns and old house and we all just sort of laughed and went our merry ways.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:48 AM

    We missed you at Home Depot by that much. We too were facing the basement water sydrome. Such is life in New England. Next is Mud Season, whoopee!

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  2. Anonymous5:22 PM

    I used to have six inches of water in my basement without fail, every time we had serious rain. I got "Tri-State Basement Systems" in and they fixed the problem! I can't say enough about the work they did. I haven't had a drop of water in the basement for probably four years now. They were a godsend. That's my testimonial. Check them out!

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