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How I spent my weekend
Jul. 17th, 2005 12:40 pmWe had rain and rain and rain. We couldn't go out to do anything, but things got interesting when my father ran up from his office in the basement to say the window well by his desk is flooding.
You see, we have window wells in front of the basement windows. They aren't actually built into the house, just in front of it, so they don't really do much. This one happened to be beneath a poorly-built balcony opening to my parents' bedroom that is built into the roof. The balcony leaks badly because it isn't designed to drain water well, so it leaks down the roof and along the wall to the foundation. It doesn't help much that the ground slopes towards the house all the way around, so all the puddles form along the foundation, especially at that spot because there's nowhere else to drain the water. So all the water went down the wall and straight into the window well (which is much better than going straight along the wall into the basement, which could also happen easily).
The water was about a foot high in the window well, and was going through the sliding window tracks and down the walls onto his desk, damaging papers and spraying onto his laptop and printer/fax. That was just some of the water, though. The rest of it went straight to the floor, where it was soaked up quite well by the sponge layer underneath. The carpet was soaked and had pockets of water underneath, and about a centimetre above the floor in spots--like where his surge protector and all his power cords were. We were carrying buckets of water and soaked towels to the laundry room to empty or wring out--almost every towel in the house had to be used to hold back the water to a controllable flow.
The floor is still damp today. The only wet/dry vacuum he could find was a steam cleaner because everything else was rented out. Plus it hasn't been soaking up well. So it's going to be rather damp in the basement for a while.
And now, to get new shoes to replace the ones ruined yesterday.
You see, we have window wells in front of the basement windows. They aren't actually built into the house, just in front of it, so they don't really do much. This one happened to be beneath a poorly-built balcony opening to my parents' bedroom that is built into the roof. The balcony leaks badly because it isn't designed to drain water well, so it leaks down the roof and along the wall to the foundation. It doesn't help much that the ground slopes towards the house all the way around, so all the puddles form along the foundation, especially at that spot because there's nowhere else to drain the water. So all the water went down the wall and straight into the window well (which is much better than going straight along the wall into the basement, which could also happen easily).
The water was about a foot high in the window well, and was going through the sliding window tracks and down the walls onto his desk, damaging papers and spraying onto his laptop and printer/fax. That was just some of the water, though. The rest of it went straight to the floor, where it was soaked up quite well by the sponge layer underneath. The carpet was soaked and had pockets of water underneath, and about a centimetre above the floor in spots--like where his surge protector and all his power cords were. We were carrying buckets of water and soaked towels to the laundry room to empty or wring out--almost every towel in the house had to be used to hold back the water to a controllable flow.
The floor is still damp today. The only wet/dry vacuum he could find was a steam cleaner because everything else was rented out. Plus it hasn't been soaking up well. So it's going to be rather damp in the basement for a while.
And now, to get new shoes to replace the ones ruined yesterday.
