The Blog of Michael T. Murphy and his lifelong obsession with "little army men" and their imaginary glory, miniature wargaming, and other things...

Thursday, July 1, 2021

"Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall..."

To borrow the quote from the Steve Martin movie "My Blue Heaven"...
And in this case it did, literally...
We are in what is known as "Storm Season" here in Indiana, and last night about 2-3 AM, we had a weird series of high intensity storm cells rip through the area like Bo and Luke Duke running from Rosco P. Coletrain.
The storm cells were fast and dropped a lot of water very quickly and then moved out, only to be replaces with another one right behind it. 
So much happened, that at 4 AM, the NWS issued a "flash flood watch" for our county.
So this morning when we got up, imagine our surprise to find water in our basement!
Later on we discovered that we weren't the only ones, so we were relieved to know that it wasn't a "just us" house issue.
TBH, it wasn't "Massive Flood" stuff, (I've been there and never want to do that again), but it was more like "Someone had sprayed the floor with a water hose enough to put water on the floor and to make the tiles slick. The TV room carpet was soaked though, (a mixed blessing)...
On the bright side, it gave me the "excuse and reason" needed to hit the DIY store and get me a nice 6 gallon/3 HP shop vac with extra tools.
However the clean up was more "Mop and Towels". The majority of the water had gone quickly down the floor drains, and what was mostly left was soaked up in the TV room rug.  With the help of mops, towels, and four fans, we had everything drying out quicker than normal. 
Once this is all done, I have to put the game room, (aka: "The Murphy-Cave/Bunker, etc...), back into operational order with some possible furniture rearranging coming up, and then use the polyseal water barrier I have and brush it on the brick to prevent an repeat of this.
The issue put my painting for the day back, and reveals to us that "Even 104 year old houses need work".
There is no "real fix" for this issue as the water saturation came up through the old brick and base foundation. The only real fix is:
A: Tear down the house.
B: Tear up the foundation.
C: Pour in a new foundation. 
D: Build a new house.
So I will be polysealing the bricks thoroughly to help repel the water.
On the bright side, nothing was damaged, and the rug held the water and soaked up the majority of it so it didn't spread further out onto the floor.
By tomorrow evening hopefully it should all pretty much be dry except the rug.
My neighbors also got water in their basement so like I said, it just wasn't a "my house problem". Thank goodness!

Here are some pics of the current status of the gaming room....

Gaming table currently holding the rug to allow the fans to dry it out...


Most of the water drained into this floor drain. The rug was above it, and this was where most of the game room water was...You can see that it is already mostly dry. The new shop vac (under the table), makes his initial introductory appearance...


The floor drying out...


Another view showing the wet floor...


Hopefully if all goes well this well be fixed up by this weekend!

Oh and I also did some painting on some 28mm Pirates, but that is going to have to be for another post!!!

More to come!

2 comments:

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

Photos of watching a floor dry have never been so exciting.

Good luck with your drying operation. I have had an apartment flood three times, each time a pipe under the concrete floor broke, so I feel your pain.

Lots of air circulation is helpful.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Sgt. Guinness said...

Sad news indeed! I’m an HVAC-R tech and have done lots of water damage remediation. If your baseboards have gotten wet than so has your drywall. You will need to use a carpet blower for the next several days pointed at each of the walls. Good luck.