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| Sunday, March 14, 2010 01:49 PM |
| (Last updated on Sunday, March 14, 2010 07:40 PM) | | Aquatic Adventures |
 by Fëanor |
Another Nor'easter, another flooded basement at casa de Fëanor and poppy. We have no French drain or sump pump or any kind of system like that, and we can't really afford to install such a thing at the moment, so when it rains this hard, flooding is pretty much inevitable. This was our worst flood yet - more than an inch deep across the entire floor of the basement, and no matter how many times I went down there with the wet vac and vacuumed and dumped and vacuumed and dumped, there never seemed to be any less water. This is probably because it's still coming in, thanks to an over-saturated water table, continuous rain, and the continuing issues with our gutters, landscaping, floors, and walls. I tried to imagine what kind of product would speed up the process and allow me to stay on top of the flooding without having to do continuous heavy lifting, and I decided the ideal thing would be a wet vac that also had a pump built in so you could send the water straight out to the curb by attaching a garden hose. I discovered that such a thing did in fact exist (right here), and that I could get it if we drove over to the Lowe's on Aramingo Avenue in Philly. So we did. Unfortunately, when I got the thing home and fired it up, I discovered it wasn't all I'd hoped it would be. It sucked up the water fast enough, but due in part to incorrect assembly by me (which I will blame on the confusing assembly instructions), and in part to an imperfect mechanism, it kept switching off before it was entirely full. Also, you can't just leave it to suck up and pump out at the same time; once the tank fills up (which happens incredibly quickly), you have to be there to manually pull the hose out of the water and then hold the power button down to engage the pump. Then you have to wait, and wait, and wait while the weak pump slowly pushes the water up and out. It's supposed to automatically shut off when it finally empties, but it never seemed to do that no matter how long I waited. So basically I had to be down there monitoring it constantly. It does save you a little bit of work, as you're not always picking it up and manually dumping it, but it certainly doesn't save you any time; in fact it seemed to be taking much, much longer than my old wet vac to move the same amount of water. Still, for a while I stuck with it, monitoring the new wet vac while I ran and manually dumped the old wet vac, and poppy helped by filling buckets. Unfortunately, as before, we just didn't seem to be getting anywhere. No matter how hard or how fast we worked, the water just seemed to stay at the same level.
Last time the basement flooded, I went to Ace Hardware seeking a solution and stopped to stare at the pumps for a while. When I saw that even the best of them only drained water down to 1/2 an inch above the floor, I decided they weren't for me and walked out - after all, at that point I only had about 1/2 an inch of water on the floor. But this time a pump seemed ideal. We have plenty more than a 1/2 inch of water down there, and a pump that you can just plug in and walk away from seemed like a positively heavenly idea. So now I've picked up a 1/4 horsepower pump very similar to this one. It's moving the water much, much faster than the Shop-Vac and with zero effort on my part. Of course, once we get the water down to 1/2 an inch, I'll have to get back to work down there with one or both of the wet vacs. But the pump should give us a great head start, besides also giving us time to rest, which is invaluable.
Anyway, here's hoping the story of our trials and tribulations will be instructive to somebody else with similar issues.
UPDATE 1: I should add, there's nothing automatic about the pump I bought. It goes on as soon as you plug it in, and it doesn't go off until you unplug it. It's not supposed to run dry, so it also must be monitored. I'm a little worried I won't know when it's stopped pulling water and should be turned off, but we'll see what happens.
UPDATE 2: As it turns out, it was pretty easy to tell by just watching and listening when the pump was done and needed to be unplugged. I got scared for a bit when the thing stopped working, but I think it just overheated from us using it so much. I let it cool for a while and it was fine. Meanwhile, once we got the water down to a manageable level, and I got that new wet vac assembled correctly, it actually became really useful. The speed of intake and the speed of output leveled out and we were able to pick up water continuously and pump it out continuously without the thing shutting off on us.
We've got things under control for the moment, although I'll have to run down again soon to do some more cleanup, as I'm sure more water is rushing in as I type this.
Another fun thing: poppy discovered that the flood had also taken out the pilot light on the hot water heater. I was going to try relighting it, but one of the first warnings on the instructions is to not do that if the thing has been underwater at all, and to instead call a service technician. We've got a guy coming out tomorrow. I really hope we don't have to replace this water heater because we just bought it not too long ago.
But I'm trying to remain positive! Hopefully the water heater issue can be cleared up with a minimum of pain tomorrow, the weather will clear up in a couple days, and we'll be able to rest from bailing for a while. Cross your fingers for us, folks! |
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