Water, Water, Everywhere!

All summer we were in a drought. Since Friday night though, it hasn't stopped raining. Raining, pouring. Southern Minnesota is being hit the worst, with entire towns being evacuated because of the flooding. My little corner of the world has not gone untouched, however.

I think I blogged about my lovely surprise when I moved into my house. Do you recall my rant on the sump that had no pump? Well, if not, let me sum up- I have a sump (hole) under the stairs in my under-stair storage area. This sump has no sump-pump. The problem with this: If water comes in, it has no way of going out again. I looked at the drain tile system, or what I thought. I called the nice company. they say that water below a certain level will drain right back out again...

Apparently, the caveat to this is that water ABOVE a certain level will not. That is what we learned the hard way last night, though I highly doubt that the bloop happened last night. We went downstairs after making and eating dinner to watch the Twins game. ::Sniff, sniff:: What is that smell? It smells wet. Around the basement went my nose, right to said sump. Hand to carpet - sure enough, there is water here.

So I spent last night with Trevor, pullling all the things out of the storage, pulling out the carpet, using the shop vac to get the water out of the sump (which was back to it's normal half-full after blooping all over my carpet), finding a fan, using said fan to dry out under stair storage area, drying carpet in main area that got wet from shopvac being emptied outside, moving fan to dry that carpet, putting carpet from understair storage out in 3 season porch with windows open to hopefully dry it before mold grows on it, and getting the can of Lysol and spraying it EVERYWHERE.

The problem with this situation is that I still don't know where we'd plum in a pump for our sump. There is really no power down there, we'd have to put in an outlet. We'd also have to cut through finished basement bits to get the water to go outside, because it is illegal to drain a sump pump into a floor drain. Even if we were to do the illegal, we'd still ahve to cut through the bathroom and into the laundry room, and by then, why not just cut to outside.

Sigh. In retrospect, it was really a small amount of water, probably only 2-5 gallons, and it probably was only there for a day. There was no carpet pad in the storage area (though the carpet that got wet in the main area does have it. It could have been so much worse. Now I just have to borrow a carpet cleaner again, as the water from the sump is yucky muddy.

Hopefully all you that I know in MN did not also have this problem.