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April 04, 2006
Noooooo . . . .
Damn it, I thought we'd seen the worst of the water problems for the year. I really should've gone out to the house yesterday to check the basement, but, in reality, there's not much that I could've done today. So, the sump pump's hole had 8" or so of water in it, there's about an inch of water throughout most of the basement, with two inches or so underneath the laundry room, and we've got our very own interior water fall.
The water was coming in far too fast for the Aqua Plug to have time to seal, and I couldn't stuff anything into the crack on the inside to slow down the flow of the water. While I could see the water draining from the large outside puddle, there's no spot on the exterior wall (at least that's above ground) that could see, never mind actually plug.
So, I assembled the second sump pump put it in the middle of the lake underneath the deck. I pulled the ends off two of the downspouts (no longer needed, for the moment, because there's no snow left on the roof), and dry fitted a 90 degree elbow and a 5' length of 1-1/2" ABS pipe onto the pump. In order to do this, I had to back my truck up and aim its headlights at the side of the house, as we've currently only got one light outside the house (at the back door). I'm sure that I made a mess of the already very muddy driveway, and I have to wonder what the neighbours thought of my watery escapade.
On the plus side, I managed to get most of the water pumped out of the hole, but won't be able to deal with it any further until the morning. I managed to get rather wet during this process, as I had to crawl underneath the deck and into the middle of the lake to get the sump pump at the lowest point. Thankfully, the flow of water into the house appears to have slowed, at least a bit, but I'm not holding my breath.
I can't get back out there until lunch time tomorrow, as I have to wait for the carpet cleaners to come to the rental house in the morning (to deal with the water problems that we're having there). While I'm waiting, I'll see if I can find another pump that can deal with smaller depths of water (probably one of the ones used to pump water off swimming pool covers). If I can get one of those, I'll put it in the basement and plumb it into the existing sump pump hole. *sigh*
All this is on top of the marking I need to get done tomorrow, never mind the three term papers and one short paper that I need to get finished in the next week. Oh, and there's a couple of final exams in there that need to be written. :-(
Posted by plainstext at April 4, 2006 11:40 PM
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