Flooding Disaster

Murphy's law... I came home last night, feeling better, and decided I would properly unpack from my last trip and do some laundry. I go down into the basement and to make a long story a little shorter, there is water EVERYWHERE! AAAHHHHH!!!!! In case you don't know, my basement is finished - half with carpet (luckily with that really tight, low carpet) and half with painted concrete floor. (by the way - if any of you decide to paint your concrete floor, DO NOT use latex paint, like the previous owners of our house did. I'll explain later...)

I run into the small part that isn't finished to take a look at the sump pump. Ours is the model with the motor on top and water is overflowing from the hole and the pump is spinning, THROWING WATER EVERYWHERE! I panic. Oh god, oh god!! In a moment of undescribable clarity I grab the float and push it down and it stops the water. Ok, I have everything a slight bit more under control than when I started.

Picture this, I had just gotten home from work - I'm in khaki pants and shirt. I had taken my socks off and rolled up my pants - sort of a Huck Finn meets biz casual girl. cute look, you should try it some time.

Ok, what would any girl do next?? (did I mention the hubby is out of town?) I call my dad, never mind he's 1000 miles away and really can't do a whole lot unless I have video conferencing right there by the sump (which I don't). I'm standing, barefoot, squating (not comfortable), holding the float down with cell earpiece in ear trying to explain what the hell is going on to my father in SC.
dad: "can you pull the plug out of the wall?"
me: "sure, I guess, but I have to hold my foot on the float and stretch over there to get it."
dad: "WAIT. you're standing in water, right?"
me: "uh, yeah. that's the gist of the whole problem"
dad: "Can you pull it out with the cord, not touching the plug - don't want you to electrocute yourself."
me: "it's a flat plug - not sure I can but I can try. you stay on the line in case I do electrocute myself you can call someone." (I thought this was a much better idea than me hanging up and then electrocuting myself and no one to call for help.)
dad: "no - don't do that."
me: "David's ringing in - let me call you back"
I fill David in as I start to try and unplug the sump. SUCCESS! and I didn't electrocute myself! YEAH!

Smart, engineer hubby has me get the pool pump (that we use if the pool outside gets to high) and rig it to start pumping water out and into the utility sink. Ok, we're getting somewhere. However, because we're not sure what caused the pump to malfunction in the first place, David doesn't want me sitting the pool pump on the bottom of the hole. Fair enough - so I sit on a step ladder and hold it.

Meantime, hubby calls his dad, who lives 15-20 minutes away to see if he can come over. David let's me know that Dave (father-in-law) is on his way. So, here's me holding the pump, waiting for help to arrive. I had to remind Dave (remember, not hubby, but father-in-law. I know, confusing, isn't it?) he'd have to let himself in because I couldn't leave my post.

So now that I'm waiting I start thinking. Oh god - I hope curiosity didn't get one of cats and that's what's clogging this. Oh god - what if, as the water starts pumping out, there's a dead cat down there. Oh god! It would probably be Cabby because she's the one with the wierd water fetish. (and she's the fluffiest, being most likely to cause the most clogging...)
As I'm thinking these horrible thoughts Cabby comes around to investigate the water sounds going on. (I'll have to write about her water fetish some other time, sorry) WHEW! Ok, one cat accounted for, only THREE more to find. Luckily the remaining three all make appearances to see what the hell is going on. They are not happy about having to slosh through water to get to their litter and food.

Which brings me to the next real issue I'm dealing with. In the next room (actually you can see the doorway behind Cabby's rear in that pic) is the workshop (as named by previous owners.) To us it's the "cat room". Yeah, it's furnished like a workshop with cabinets and great shelving and other storage, but that's not it's main purpose in our house. We do keep all the tools, manual and power, there but more importantly we keep the cat food and THREE XL litter boxes there too. The litter boxes are sitting on top of industrial rubber-backed mats. This tries to catch the litter off the paws and keep it to a minimum in the rest of the house. Right in front of the boxes the litter really starts to pile up. We vacuum the mats off at least once a month - last time we cleaned was about a month ago... We use clumping litter. I won't go into detail but just imagine a bunch of wet litter. I won't say any more but to say it looked like sludge. Use your imagination to fill in the rest.

The painted concrete is white. Why? I have NO IDEA! That's the dumbest color for any part of a house EVER!! So now, there are little dark gray spots (individual pieces of litter) that are now full of water all over all the concrete floors. Have you ever seen bacteria grow in a petri dish? Yeah, it looked like we had little cultures growing ALL OVER the floor. GROSS! Add to that, the previous idiot owners painted it with latex so now we have paint bubbles popping up all over the floor. The floor looks like a mix of bacteria cultures and boils. EWW!!!

I know it sounds as though we never clean - but I swear we do. However 4 little cats can track a hell of a lot of litter around in a short period of time.

Ok, back to the story (it's gets going faster here...) Dave shows up and brings his 16 gallon wet/ dry vac. He rigs the pool pump so I don't have to hold it and he proceeds to HELP ME clean up this disgusting, gross place we call our basement. He's bent over sucking up water while I'm moving things off the floor. He helps me roll up the nasty rugs and carry them outside. I move into the carpet rooms and start sucking the water up there. He's still moving things off the floor onto high ground.

Now, I wasn't very optimistic about the carpet. I immediately start seeing $$ as I think of how we going to have to replace it. Have you ever used a huge wet/dry vac on wet carpet? Check this action out! See the lighter part where I sucked the water right up?? I was in business!

At this point all I really have to do is continue to suck water out of the carpet. I tell Dave I really apreaciate his help but I have it from here. No need for him to continue to subject himself to this misery. But no - he stays. He's in it for the long haul. Good thing too - I sucked up so much water in such a short time that I definitely needed his help to carry it up to dump outside. Dave ROCKS! I think he was here for about THREE HOURS!

Well, at this point it is clear the sump pump needs replaced. (did I mention how lucky we are we have a super duty de-humidifier? it's been going on hi ever since the beginning of this fiasco.) The hole keeps filling up and will need to be pumped every so often. I set the watch - every hour I'm going to be down there pumping until I can get the sump replaced. - tomorrow. I call a friend at work and explain that I'm not going to be in the office in the morning due to this pumping predicament. Later in the evening I realize I can go 2 hours between pumps. YEAH! I slept on the couch - closer to the basement. I was up every two hours pumping out water. If this is what it's like to have an infant, forget it!

So, now I'm at home, mopping the floor with a bleach solution and pumping every 2 hours. In a few minutes I'm heading out to purchase a new sump pump and Dave is coming over tonight to help me install it. I have some rugs in the garage that need wet/ dry vac-ing. I'll do that too this afternoon. In the end I decided to take a vacation day. I'm not really getting much work done when I'm trying to bleach-mop the floor, etc... This weekend (or next, once everything is REALLY dry) I'll be steam-cleaning the carpet downstairs too.

Morals of the story:
1) keep your basement clean. You think it's "just the basement" but someone is bound to see it at it's worst.
2) make sure you have someone, and a back-up someone, to help you when you really need it, even if the job is WAY disgusting. Sometimes you may not know who that person is until disaster strikes.
3) don't store things on the floor of the basement - even if it is finished and you think it's safe
4) keep a close eye on the sump pump for failures.