Monday, June 30, 2008

If we didn't have bad luck, we'd have no luck at all...

Just over a week ago, we got *hammered* with a two-hour long hailstorm, thunder, lightning, and pounding rain. The hail was about dime size, so it wasn't terribly large, but big enough to damage all my plants and make all the berries fall off our tree. No big whoop (in the grand scheme of things).

The fun part of the storm was, I decided to have Josh check out the basement during the storm to see if there was any rain coming in because the storm was THAT fierce. He came up and said that the basement was fine and we went back to watching tv. I had a funny feeling that I should just double-check that, like a little leprechaun sitting on my shoulder, and we went back down half an hour later.

Well, lo and behold, we first walked into the laundry room and he went in first and said "all clear!" I took a look in and said "hey, what's this?" He said "what?" I said "this crack in the wall and the pool of water that's forming below it..." (insert sarcastic tone here). So I ran up the stairs and grabbed an armful of towels and trudged back downstairs. Josh had the fun job of mopping/squeegeeing the floor and I put the towels down. Heh.

The crack in the wall in the laundry room is RIGHT below our electrical panel...great place for it. On the outside it's right near our gas pipe. We have all the luck in the world. I had him call our electrician friend right away just to make sure that everything was ok.

Then we left the laundry room and continued walking around the basement and I noticed another LARGE puddle forming in the corner. So a bunch more towels went down. Then I looked up. I noticed that one of the ceiling tiles was wet...that can't be good. The problem with that leak is that we have interlocking brick in the backyard that's sloped TOWARDS the house, yes, the magoo who installed it decided it would be a good idea to do that. So now we're going to have to re-grade the backyard and re-install all the interlock bricks. Awesome! (No, before you ask, we didn't install the bricks...)

Just as we were about to leave the basement I decided to check the closet...I just had a feeling. The floor was SOAKED with water, so much so that it was trailing through the closet and back into the main room of the basement. Apparently a pipe decided to leak at the same time as the storm happened (or at least that's what the fine people at Roto-Rooter told us the next day when I called them. Originally I thought it was all from the flood, but it was all just a coincidence. Lucky us...

Anyways, now we're at the 'fun' part of the flood, we're getting quotes from various suppliers to fix the leaks/cracks and waterproof the basement. So far we've had three quotes and none of them have even been remotely the same. All we can do is laugh when we see the numbers.

I swear, if there's any more rain in the forecast, I'm just going to take the bold step and build an ark...

10 comments:

4D said...

Stay dry!

Keep smilin

D & S said...

How frustrating! You should call Mike Holmes and see if he'll fix your house for you :).

Red Sand said...

Ugh. I'd been thinking of flooded basements all weekend b/c we went to Fundy and last time we did that, we returned to my sister's to find a massive basement flood... hope I didn't jinx you. Sending you dry thoughts.

C's Mom said...

Well shite!

I can relate to a soggy lower level and it's never good.

Gotta hate a wet crack in the house!

spitgirl said...

Bah! You need to send some of that rain this way.

Juliette said...

Crap! I hope you can find someone honest who will do a nice job for a reasonable price. Seems when you have a house, there is ALWAYS something going on.
Happy Canada day tomorrow, hopefully dry and sunny! We so need it.

Anonymous said...

Come move here. The weather is soooo much better.

Anonymous said...

What a fun summer this is shaping up to be. Hope the ark thing works out for you.

A Mom- In-W8ing said...

I feel your pain with the dampness below. Whenever we get a bad rainstorm here in NS we end up with the same mess in our basement. Our shop vac is our friend, lol!

Good luck with the estimates!

Smiles! :o)
Nikki

kerri said...

Oh crap....
We too had some hail damage, the storms have been pretty wild around here, let's hope they are over.
Good luck with your estimates..