A few weeks ago the Northern VA area was hit by one heck of a storm, and like many people in the area we lost our power. That night I had a few girl friend's over to craft, however we ended up talking and cooking sa'mores by candle light instead.
Despite the heat, I don't mind power outages and after my friends left I went upstairs to hang out with Brett (who was playing his Game Boy DS in bed). It had now been about 7 hours without power and the upstairs was extremely hot, so I asked Brett to go down to the basement to get playing cards to give us a distraction (and me the satisfaction of kicking his tail in Rummy).
Five minutes later he was back with cards and bad news. Since the power was out the sump pump had stopped working and our basement floor (i.e. our new carpet) was completely soaked through with water. For the next hour we tried soaking up as much water as we could, using every towel in the house, but finally we gave up.
The next morning we still didn't have power, and the water level had raised to about 2 inches in the deepest parts. Oh, and all the food we had in the freezer was also melting on top of everything else.
So, we did the only thing we new to do, and as soon as Brett got to work he sent out an evite to all our friend's inviting them to a BBQ that night so that all the food wouldn't go to waste. Thankfully, around 3pm (about 24 hours after the storm started) the power did kick back on, and sent us into rush mode to get the basement dry and the food cooked.
As I cooked, Brett toweled the basement, set up fans and dehumidifiers, and we tried to get everything under control. By the end of the night we had a lot less food and water, but there was still a lot of work to do.
The next day I went to Home Depot and bought a wet vac, and that evening Brett and our friend Tony Witherspoon worked from 6pm-11pm wet vaccing, toweling and sweating in the basement. By the time they were done we finally had gotten the basement from soaked to damp.
The rest of the weekend, Brett and I continued with the same process and the following week had the carpet guys come out to remove our carpet pad, which was still holding a lot of water.
Since then we have scheduled to have our entire basement water proofed, with a second sump pump added, as well as a back up battery on both sump pumps. Additionally we are going to have to replace a lot of the dry wall that ended up moldy, and all of the carpet pad. Once that process is complete we plan to have the ventilation system cleaned out and the carpets steam cleaned.
Home ownership is such a joy ;) We just thank God that this happened before Baby Aaron's arrival!
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