Knee-Deep in Water and My New Best Friend

After Massachusetts was hit with three days of torrential downpour, Scott and I were surprised and relieved to find that our basement stayed dry as a bone. Until Tuesday night that is... when we came home to find five inches of water maneuvering its way into our new home.

OK... so maybe it wasn't "knee-deep"... but "shin-deep" just doesn't have the same effect!

I'm in the kitchen and Scott goes down to the basement to grab a paintbrush. A second later he yells up the stairs "oh man -- there is SO much water down here!" Not thinking twice about it (as Scott quite enjoys freaking me out), I yell back "yeah, OK Scott. Good one!" and continue cleaning. Five seconds later come the gentle sounds of Scott splashing around in our swamp of a basement. A wave of panic washes over me as Scott starts loudly laughing to himself out of sheer nervousness and disbelief. I suddenly wish my parents lived next door.

Scott throws on some (dry) sneakers and high-tails it to the nearest Lowe's to buy a Shop Vac. I grab my somewhat waterproof winter boots and begrudgingly trudge down to the basement to find a mirrored pool at the bottom of the stairs.

Me being the super smart and resourceful first-time homebuyer I am, I grab the nearest bucket and begin dumping water bit-by-bit into a big trash barrel. Thank God Scott is the super strong and agreeable first-time homebuyer he is, because he's the poor bastard that had to carry each barrel up the bulkhead steps and empty it out into the driveway (therein somewhat flooding our neighbor's lawn... but we'll just pretend that was from the rain, too...).

After about two hours of bucketing out water, I finally got my hands on my new best friend: The Shop Vac. Man does that thing suck. I cheer for my new friend as I watched it slurp up up the puddles scattered around the basement and actually start to dry out certain areas.

With the basement 95% dry, we run upstairs to grab a couple fans out of the attic to try and circulate the air. When we come back down, we see that somehow, several of the puddles have begun to fill up all over again!! Bugger!

We put on our detective caps and try to solve the mystery of the wet basement... where is this water coming from and why won't it go away?

Did you know that water can come up through the ground and begin bubbling up through the floor of the foundation? Yeah... we didn't either.  Little dips and cracks in the floor became the entry point for the water, which had no where else to go but up! Every time we vacuumed the floor, more water came up in it's place! Needless to say, it was a long night... although highly entertaining.

We ended up having to cut up a rug in the partially-finished section of the basement (which was OK by me as it smelled like wet dog anyway) but besides that we lucked out -- there was no real damage. The boiler stayed dry since it was thankfully on a slightly higher area of the basement and avoided the path of the water.

All of the kitchen stuff, tools and sporting equipment (including our golf bags) got a little wet, but nothing to cry about. The next day I went to Home Depot and bought a new adjustable shelving unit that allowed me to make the bottom shelf high enough to keep our things from getting damaged by water in the future.

Here are my tips for other first-time homebuyers and those looking to buy a home, based on what I learned this week:

• If you are still searching for a home, check each listing or with your real estate agent to see if the homes have a sump pump. We don't have one as of right now, and it really would've saved us a lot of time and energy.
• If a home you put an offer in on is: A)on the bottom of a hill B)near a river/pond/lake/ocean C)sitting on a fieldstone foundation and is an older home (ours was built in 1900), have your Inspector pay particularly close attention to any potential water damage, so you know what you're getting in to.
• If you just bought your home, don't just throw everything down into the basement that you don't want to put away! If you have any valuables that you would be upset about losing, don't put them in the path of a potential "damage zone" -- get some nice shelves and give yourself piece of mind that they will be out of harms way!

Next on our list will be to check for any potential mold damage in the partially finished room in the basement... crossing my fingers everything will be OK!