Flooding
Last night we had some major rainfall – a neighbor’s gauge showed almost 6 inches this morning. News reports are saying anywhere from 4-7+ inches, depending on the area and they’re saying there were a few areas that were “off the charts” (does that mean their gauges overflowed??). Two blocks from our house, people were rescued in boats and many houses are under water. Thankfully our house is up high on a hill, so we didn’t have to worry about flooding like everyone else, but we did get around an inch of water throughout the basement which was a first. Last summer, my big project was building a media room in the basement. Walking in there this morning having water squish through my toes definitely felt strange. Our power just came back on, so it’s time to get the fans and shopvacs going. As annoying as it is to have to dry out the basement, we’re extremely lucky/blessed to not be under water, or even have more than an inch in the basement.
I checked the Sheridan House this morning and it was fine – there was a bit more seepage than normal, but if that’s all that there is when 5+ inches comes down in a short period of time, I have no complaints.
We have some good photos which I’ll add to this post later. We also made some awesome progress on the Sheridan House yesterday which I’ll write more about later too.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
So did you get flooding in your basement because the power went out and the sump pump (assuming you have one) had no power or was the water just coming in faster than it could drain? We got hit pretty good with rain last night too, but luckily everything stayed dry.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Our house (and most of the others in the area) doesn’t have a sump pump. There’s one corner of the house that every once in a while has a little bit of water seep through the wall, but this flooding was because with so much rain coming down so quickly, it was more than the gutters could handle and they overflowed and the water came in through the basement windows.
We got everything dried out except for the carpet/padding in the newly finished area of the basement. After talking to a friend who does restoration in Chicago, it looks like we’re going to have to pull up the carpet and get rid of the padding or it will never dry out. Not the best news, but again, certainly better than many people fared. Let’s just hope that the potential 3-5 additional inches tonight doesn’t become a reality or there may be some even more major problems in this area.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:31 am
[...] As promised, here are some photos from the flooding this week. My brother (who is a photographer) took these photos. Thankfully, even though more rain was forecast for the past two days, very little ended up coming down. The ground is still so saturated that even the quarter-inch we got last night put a lot of water on the roads. [...]