The Flood

Friday night.

Shane was asleep. Carrie and I went upstairs together but I had to run back down to turn off lights and lock up.

I ran down to the basement and was very surprised when I splashed off the last stair.

Our basement was flooded.

My brain lurched. Something was off.

Oh wait, I was standing on underwater carpet.

I yelled up for Carrie and then went into damage control: Where was the water coming from? I sploshed around, turned off the main water, and scratched my head. I couldn't find drip marks anywhere and the most likely culprit, the new water heater, was fine.

Carrie came down and had a nice brain lurch, as well. She unplugged everything electric and replugged in the sump pump while I called Dan. The water level receded and I took this video.

Carrie called insurance while I Googled "What to do when your basement floods."

The good news was the water we walked on was clean. It wasn't sewage.

The bad news was 4-inches deep in some areas and spread through all four corners of the basement.

Dan arrived before the emergency plumber. He confirmed what already had me confused: There was no obvious source of a leak. The walls were dry above the water line. He checked out the water heat, turned water back on to the house, and had me run the dishwasher and faucets to see if there was anything odd in the lines. He noticed that the sump pump was missing a check valve, but scratched his head as to where all the water had come from.

That's when it started to rain. Dan drove through rain on his way over. He asked me on the phone if it was raining, but it was barely sprinkling out. Barefoot, I walked around the house and checked our rain barrels. There was no obvious source of water from outside.

I bring this up, because the emergency plumber was equally befuddled. He clued in on the sump pump quickly, but there was a lot of water. It had to come from somewhere. He asked us when the last rain was and assumed that the water must have come from our basement being below the water table.The only thing he could do that night was turn off the water from the street to the house, but he didn't see what good that would do.

Saturday morning, the next plumber had another theory. She was a 30 year veteran and extremely thorough. She tried to turn off the street water just to see what would happen.

It didn't work.

She also opened up the sump pump and found that the pipe was cracked. It would run, but most of the water it pumped up spilled right back in through the crack. She replaced our sump pump with a new one (to the tune of $700 insurance doesn't cover) and gave us a theory: The sump pump went bad and the water may have come from a leaky pipe in the yard between the street and our house. Because the water is leaking before it reaches our meter, we wouldn't notice it on our bills or pay for it. However, it could saturate the ground enough that if the sump pump failed: WHOOSH!

The yard has never seemed particularly wet, but it's a theory. It's the job of the local water authority to check the street choke and she said we should call them. They're not open on weekends (of course) so we'll have to call on Monday.

In the meantime, the clean up crew hired through USAA came. Carrie and I took Shane out for errands while they ripped up the basement floor.

It took the team around four hours. The fans are very loud, but will have to be run for the next three days.

The situation is unfortunate, but not the end of the world. We're going to be out some money. Thankfully, we save what we can and buy second-hand and cheap where we can. I'm not very attached to anything physical and the relatively few things Carrie is attached to were safe.

We knew we'd need to replace the sump pump one day and we'd talked about upgrading the basement, so I guess the day came early. Maybe God figured we were well enough off and decided to let us help keep a bunch of people employed. I'm okay with that. Everyone who came by was great and I owe Dan for being willing to drive over late on a work night. Our next door neighbors saw the activity and texted to ask if they could help, too.

I'll add updates later on. Right now we're in fan-land and happy we acted quickly.