The Flood is Behind Us…

It’s been a tough week at the Meitzler’s. As I blogged last Sunday morning, water was coming in the back of the basement. At that time I could see where it was coming from, but never actually saw it come in. We got about 40-50 gallons on both Friday and Saturday nights – based on the amount we vacuumed out of the carpet in the office.

The Friday night water, we just vacuumed up and set fans to running. The Saturday night water was even more and we had to tear up the carpeting after moving all the office furniture out of the room. I had the idea I could set up temporarily in another room, and keep working – not knowing what was ahead of me. On Sunday we got all the carpet up, tore up the pad and removed it, and set up rented carpet fans to dry the carpeting. It all went quite smoothly. Monday morning I was able to contact a local carpet layer, and cleaning company to be in first thing Tuesday morning to prepare to lay the carpet and clean things up. I figured I’d be all back together by Tuesday night.

Keep in mind that I thought all along that the water that had come into the basement was being caused by our excessive rain and the fact that I’d just put new gutters on the house, saturating the ground and coming in through a crack that I could not find in the foundation (there wasn’t one). We redirected the water from the downspouts with 4 inch corrugated pipe, running it to the hill at the side of the house.

We had no water problems at all on Sunday night. However, on Monday night about 2:30 am, Patty heard water running. I ran downstairs and watched in horror as gallons of water literally poured through the basement window, where the window well was completely full of water. This time there was no carpet pad laid to soak up and slow the water down and the water was quickly making it’s way into other rooms.

About the time I ran downstairs, Patty heard the water stop – and realized that she had heard our own irrigation system. We’d never heard it before, as we just bought this place last fall and knew it had problems and had thought it was all turned off. Well – it wasn’t. It looks like I’d hit the wrong buttons when I attempted to shut the system off on April 15 – and someone had been kind enough to turn the water valve back on out at the road (a valve that I know I turned shut). So our flood was caused by broken irrigation sprinklers in our own back yard. Grrr…

We spent the rest of the week moving furniture, and anything else that had been in the path of the water, and again, drying out the carpet. On Thursday, the carpet guys came in, laid new pad, relaid the carpet, and then cleaned it. It took until Friday afternoon before we dared moved furniture onto it again.

Since then, I’ve spent many hours catching up email, shipping orders, and getting ready for the trip to NGS in Raleigh. I think I’ll be ready to catch the plane at 6:30 Tuesday morning – but there’s no time to spare. I will blog as I can catch the time to do so. I plan to do lots of it at the conference itself… Hope to see you in Raleigh! If you are there, be sure and stop by the Family Roots Publishing booth and say hello.