I wasn't a huge believer that the rain was going to be a huge deal in our area. Afterall, it is rain. Rain comes down, it collects in puddles and grows bigger. If your house is near water, you better pack up the stuff in your basement and hope for the best. Oh, and make sure you have flood insurance.
But I was wrong. Water is a very sneaky thing. It gets into the ground and you think it is gone . . . but it grows when it is fed by hours of rain. The only thing I was thinking about last Wednesday was how much snow would be on the ground if it was February.
At about 9pm my son asked if I should check on the guitar amp we have in the basement. I went down and saw a thin lip of water coming from one corner of the basement. I got a little nervous and we began sucking up water any way that we could. It kept coming. It was evil.
It wasn't until my father-in-law came with a big sump pump and we broke the seal on our sump pit (thank you Mr. Radon installer for sealing our sump pit) that we saw the water go down. I checked around the rest of the perimeter of the basement - small encroachments of water all around.
Lesson #1 - Water can come from the ground up.
Lesson #2 - I learned this a day later. When said water comes up and gets some of your carpet, there is always more underneath than you think.
When I pulled back the carpet, it was scary to see what was going on underneath it all. So yeah, we had a few days of fans and dehumidifiers and bleach going to stop the advance of public enemy no#2 - mold.
For me it was a creepy lesson on life.
1. Make sure you are prepared for the things that you can foresee.
2. Don't assume that because you have built your walls nice and high that the undesirable things of life can't get in another way.
and . . .
3. Check under your rugs periodically to make sure that you aren't incubating more trouble.
Let's pray for a low humidity and breezy week . . .
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