Flood!

If you've been watching the weather, you may have noticed the midwest (at least our part of the midwest) has had a typically wet spring. In the past couple of days we've had several more inches of rain with more on the way. So, I guess it didn't come as a huge suprise last Sunday when Tammy and the kids went to the basement to find a flood of water.

My immediate thought upon seeing the water was that the sump pump had failed and flooded the basement (nearly every house in Iowa has a sump pump and flooded basements are very common around here). I went straight to the pump and opened the well and tested out the pump and all appeared to be in working order. So, perplexed by what could have caused the flood, we ventured into the storage room where the water seemed to be originating. I looked around the base of the walls, examined the water pipes coming into and out of the house (that's where the main water lines come in and sewer lines leave the house), and everything appeared to be fine. We just couldn't figure out where al the water was coming from.

Finally, after considerable wondering and thinking on the subject, I remembered that the previous day I had used the outside hose hookup while doing some yardwork. At the top of the storage room, there is a small pipe leading to the outside where the hose attaches and we wondered if that may have been the cause. So, Tammy headed upstairs and opened the valve. Immediately, water began spraying out of the pipe and pouring down the wall into our storage room. I started yelling "SHUT IT OFF, SHUT IT OFF". Of course Tammy couldn't hear me so Adam in a panic rushed up the stairs and relayed the message.

It turns out the pipe probably burst during the winter time (we had a very cold December). The break just happened to be on the other side of the valve that controls the outside water flow so we didn't know about it until I used the outside hose. The previous day I had had the water on for 20 or 30 minutes. At the rate it was spraying from the pipe, that was more than enough time to cause the water to cover a signficant portion of the basement.

So that was the bad news. Fortunately in this situation, the good news far outweighs the bad. About half of our basement is finished. The pipe is located in the unfinished storage room so there is no drywall around it. The only carpet in the room is just carpet scraps that have been rolled out across the floor. We simply rolled those up and hung them outside to dry. The flood was bigger than just the storage room though and did soak some of our installed carpet. Fortunately, that carpet is heavy duty indoor/outdoor carpet with no pad under it. It was fairly easy to dry out with a few fans blowing on it for a couple of days. The water also didn't appear to damage any drywall and all the stuff we had on the floor of the storage room was in plastic bins so none of that stuff was damaged either.

I'm fortunate to have a very good friend (my running partner, Dave C.) who also happens to be a skilled plumber. He came over and quickly figured out what we'd need to repair the broken pipe (we ended up replacing the outside faucet and some of the copper pipes leading to it) and later returned to teach me how to "sweat pipe". It's something I had never done before and it was a good chance to learn it. It was actually quite easy and fun to do and made me want to go and replumb the dishwasher! Then again maybe not.

So, thanks to Dave and to the good fortune of a well placed pipe, a much worse disaster was averted this time. Two plumbing projects in one month is more than enough for me!