With that job under control I headed off to do some errands and get some homework taken care of. Michelle decided to use her time to exercise, get ready for the day and other tasks related to the care of our children. However, upon completing her exercise program she went into our storage/toy room and noticed the distinct sound of running water, kind of like the sound of a small fountain or water fall. As she moved closer toward the sound she squooshed through a soaked carpet. With a hastiness in her stride she moved closer toward the two shelves of storage against the north wall only to notice that water was pouring in through that window!
Her quick reactions are nothing short of a miracle as she located a water pump from one neighbor, assembled a quick bail-out contraption for the flooded strip of land immediately on our north and removed all storage and shelving from the flooded section of the basement!
Apparently the pvc pipe connection to the garden water system popped/blew/disconnected and had been pouring full blast for a full hour. It had literally filled up the strip of land just north of our house. The short cement divider held the water so that the water was beginning to fill the window wells. The level of water had reached high enough to beginning pouring into the house!
Needless to say, everything in that corner of the basement was soaked. However, because of Michelle’s quick thinking the flooding was limited to the north east corner of that one room only! I had the pleasure of repairing the disconnected system. This, as it turns out, is no easy feat (for me).
Because the pvc pipe cement causes a chemical reaction that essentially melts the pipes together, once the connection is broken it really can’t be glued back together. We discovered this after 2 tries at reconnecting the pipes. So I had to rebuild the entire connection which doesn’t just feed the garden but also feeds the front and back shrub beds.
Let’s just say that after 4 days of fans and heaters, the carpet is now dry (and clean due to the convenient use of my parent’s carpet cleaner). And the carpet was dry before the pipe was finally fixed (for sure). We are still going to run the garden through a complete watering cycle before we fill in the whole and pronounce this project officially complete.
