slhaas
CH.com Veteran
 
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Posts: 181
West Allis, WI, USA
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I apologize in advance, but I needed to vent a little as I sit and wait for the next round of bailing out my basement.
So the night starts really humid and hot in the house, but just before bed we decide we're going to be miserable through the night and close the windows because it was raining really hard and we didn't want to mess up the wood floors. I just moved in to this house, my first that I've owned, so I decide it's a good time to fire up the a/c and see how it works. It's also my first central air. The air isn't coming in very strong so I head downstairs and sure enough, the air filter is in backwards for the HVAC. I swap it out and as I head upstairs to bed I notice a puddle against a wall.
I'm checking out this small puddle and see it grow. I'm angry, but it's going to the drain and I know I can deal with it this weekend. Maybe seal up around the foundation near the steps... hopefully nothing more. Then I hear a drip. I head to the finished side of the basement and there is an old electric junction box with a switch that contains an old style fuse. I'm not sure if it's connected to anything, but I doubt it. Regardless, water is pouring out of this box like a faucet. Now I'm really pissed. I'm mad that things weren't caught by me or the inspector when I bought the house a couple of months ago, and angry at the seller. I assume this was something that has to have occurred before, and it was not disclosed. I have a statement detailing that they don't know of any leaking, etc. other than some seepage (where that puddle was), but how am I ever going to prove this happened before.
Well, now I'm really mad, and thinking about costs. Who knows what kind of foundation work is needed because it's coming from an area of an inaccessible crawlspace walled up in the basement. For sure the driveway needs to be taken out and redone in the back to guide water away from this spot, as I can see it pooling near where the leak must be coming from.
It gets worse... as I'm dealing with this I notice water start to bubble up from the floor drain in the basement. It's clear, at least, so it's rain and not poop water as typical in the Milwaukee area, but it's rising fast. Now I wake up the girlfriend and it's time to feverishly attempt to save belongings from flooding as there is no sump pump in this house. My living room is scattered with guitars and miscellaneous items, and the basement has stacks on top of other stacks in the few dry spots. The water keeps rising and rising. I reached into that drain to see if it was clogged and pulled out handfuls of silt, sticks, rust and mud, so that's not good, but the water is backing up and it's the small part of the problem. I stuff as many towels as I can into the pipe and it slows down the flooding a lot.
Well, I figure I'm going to be up all night anyway, and I'm not going to just give away my basement, so I figure I'll fight the water, even if it's a losing effort. I start bailing... I have a 1 gallon bucket, but the way I have to tilt it I can only get it 1/10-1/8 full at a time, and then walk it to the sink, empty and repeat. I am guessing this will drain out to the sewer and ultimately back into my house, but as I said, I have to do something or I'll go crazy. Low and behold it's working, and I'm getting a really annoying workout.
About 2000 bails into the effort I get hit with a damn CH. I haven't had a hit in some time, so what the hell? I did miss my verapamil dose because of this, but I assume it was more the stress or bending or something. Luckily I have Imitrex injections, so I take a jab and back to bailing. I got the ware down to nearly nothing, but it's almost 4am, and I'm SUPPOSED to work in the morning... ha! The problem is that it's slowly rising again, and the weather looks like heavy rain for a long time... maybe throughout the day. Wonderful.
The next fun part is going back down to bail again when I'm done with my little rant break. Then in the morning I get to try to find a plumber that isn't going to rip me off and figure out what I need to do to prevent this. I'm guessing a tearing up of my basement is in order, a sump pump installed, and with my luck I'm guessing that floor drain/palmer valve setup is going to have to be ripped out and new pipe installed, probably out into the yard or down to the street.... for thousands of dollars I don't have. So much for St. Louis and my hopes to buy a motorcycle this summer. Plus the damn driveway will need to get done, but I guess that's a little problem right now. The cleanup should be fun, but at least it's not sewage, and can be done for the cost of bleach and some sweat.
Thanks for reading my rant, and send me a note if you know a good, honest plumber in the SE Wisconsin area. Back to bailing out the basement.
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