Two days prior to moving into our new house, it was ‘carpet day.’ But, last Sunday night, there was about 3 inches of rain in less than 12 hours. Matt met the carpet people at the house on Monday morning and we had a flood! This doesn’t sound like good news for a brand new construction, does it? I kept imagining years and years of heartache regarding this dream that we’ve worked so hard and envisioned for so long. Neither one of us wanted water problems with this house, too (we dealt with that at the last place)…especially not in a finished basement!!!
It was soon discovered that the reason for the flood was a clogged drain in a window well. All of our window wells have drains at the bottom of them so that anytime water gets in them (when it rains) the drain will take the water to the weeping tile (lots of big words that I didn’t know 6 months ago), which will take the water AWAY from the house. Because the outside grading isn’t complete yet, that corner of the house is the lowest area of the property and one little drain isn’t going to work very efficiently at dispersing gallons of water from the entire property…especially if it’s clogged! Apparently, the window well filled completely up with water and when the seal on the window couldn’t take the pressure anymore…all came rolling in!
Matt and our contractor thought it was just a freak thing and were hoping to get the grading outside done before the next big rain…well…that didn’t happen! The ground has been so wet, that they can’t get their excavators in and out of the mud very easily to finish up the outside.
Well, Friday was our big day. The carpet got installed on Wednesday, the cleaning crew came on Thursday and we moved in! I didn’t think, for one second, that a flood could happen again. But, guess what? We got another 2 inches of rain on Friday night! Matt woke up about 2:30 am (keep in mind this is our first night in the house) and thought he’d check out the basement and see if it was dry. I didn’t wake up at this point. What did wake me up was him barreling upstairs and into our room to get clothes and shoes on to go outside. He said (very out of breath), "The basement window is flooding the basement again!” I think I asked him to repeat himself about 4 times.
He ran outside to inspect things, not that anything was different than the night before, but I guess he wanted to make sure that bulldozers hadn’t come in the middle of the night. I went down to the basement to check out the problem. Yep. There was a problem…A HUGE PROBLEM! The window well was full again and had just begun to relieve the pressure by creating a waterfall from the bottom of the window onto the basement floor. Looking out this standard size window (not a basement size window) I saw what looked like a muddy fish tank. The water was more than half way up and was almost the same level as the ground! This window is in a 12 X 12 room, already framed, but not finished. To the side of the framing is our water heater and right next to the wall is a drain, about 3 inches in diameter. Just on the other side of that wall is about 600 square feet of finished space…AND CARPET!
Plan #1. Matt came running downstairs with a wet/dry vac. I’m not sure what he thought he was going to get done with that. The water was rushing into the basement at the speed of about a gallon every 10 seconds or so (I’m not exaggerating…even though I’ve been known to do so) and he filled that thing up in about 1 minute! Now, we had a wet/dry vac full of water and nowhere to dump it except in the drain that was obviously not big enough to handle the water it was given in the first place!
Plan #2 (this was not a good one either, but we’re trying to work through this as efficiently as possible…and on about 1 hour of sleep) was to go outside and try to empty the well with 5 gallon buckets and then throw the water to the other side of the garage. I have mentioned that water was RUSHING into the window well, right? After about 5 minutes, we realized this wouldn’t work.
Plan #3. Finally, Matt realized that the drain at the bottom of the window well, may be clogged. So, he jumps in the water, which is about up to his chest…and VERY cold. “OOOOOOHHHHH, OOOOOOHHHH,” he’s shouting! Of course, this was a bad idea, too, because unless he’s got snorkel gear and has magical powers that can see through muddy water, he’s going to make little progress. Okay, we’re running out of ideas now.
Plan #4. Matt suggested that I use a squeegee and do my best to push as much water as I can from the basement floor to the little drain, right by the wall that has carpet on the other side of it! Are you kidding? It seemed like a terrible idea. Why would I push the water to the area that I wanted to keep it away from? While I was doing this, he was going to go to Meijer and buy a submersible sump pump. He was only gone about 30 minutes, but 30 minutes goes quickly when you’re asking God for a miracle. He was back before I knew it and somehow, the carpet was still dry! Thank you God!!! In less than 5 minutes, the window well was empty and it was working well enough to pump out the water that was coming in. The flood had subsided.
Now, clean up. After about an hour of helping Matt clean up the mess in the basement, I went back to bed. It was still the middle of the night. But, in just about 15 minutes, he came running up again shouting that the sump pump fizzled out! I needed to get back to my squeegee and praying while he went to Meijer again.
We continued to work at clean up and keeping the water away from our prized carpet, until about 6:30 am. Matt told me, “Call Ross.” He’s our contractor. You’re probably wondering why we didn’t do this a lot earlier, right? Don’t ask me…your mind doesn’t work right when you’re in panic mode and haven’t gotten much sleep in 2 days! Ross rolled in about the time our troops were waking up, which was good, because I was needed for breakfast prep. But, I still kept praying!
By this time the rain had stopped and the sun was coming out. The water in the window well was gone and Matt and Ross were able to suck out much debris that had clogged the pipe. Then they attached a pipe to the gutters, allowing the water to drain AWAY from the house. Eventually, they’ll be buried under the ground, but like I said, they’re not done outside yet.
Later Sunday afternoon, I thought it would be a good laugh to tease Matt by mimicking the noises he made when he jumped in that cold water. He said, “I’m not ready to laugh about this yet!” I guess he’ll let me know when he is!
We’re expecting more rain tonight. I hope the clog is gone!
This is the window and well that was more than half way full of water. Imagine a water fall rushing in along the bottom of the window!
Other than the drama on the first night, things are going GREAT! I’ll soon be updating our video and will post it as soon as I can!
Thank you to all who have been praying for us as we ventured on this project. And thank you to those who have helped us with the building process, too! It’s not done yet…there is still some work to do outside (it's a swamp outside), but we feel that we’ve reached our goal. It’s still hard to believe that building a house on this lot started as just an idea…almost 10 years ago!
Our door is always open to friends and family. A friend told me the other day that she wanted to come over but didn't want us to think she was nosey. Even if I thought that, I wouldn't care! One of the things we want is that our friends and family feel welcome when they're here. But, until the excavating is done outside, please use the garage door to come in!
Adri is really enjoying her room, too! Although, I wish she didn't know how to open the doors! She came out of her room on Saturday morning saying, "Mom, you at?" It also didn't take her long to figure out where the pantry is! Who was the one that had the bright idea to get lever door handles instead of knobs? Oh, that's right...it was me! BAD IDEA AMANDA!
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