Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
The rains are back. And with the ground frozen, there's nowhere for the water to go — nowhere good, anyway. So, rather than wait for my neighbor's pump to put in an appearance (it's been three days; surely his crawlspace is quite full...?) I broke down and bought a pump of my own. It's nothing amazing — I didn't have the money for amazing — but it's now been running for a good 12 hours, which has brought the water level down two very welcome inches.
I'm planning to pick up a larger-diameter hose for it this evening, which should allow it to clear things out even faster. It just feels good to be doing something, rather than watching and worrying. It feels better to cheer on the efforts of a heroic little pump than to curse the flooding.
The patio is down to an inch here. You can see the crust of ice on the legs of the sawhorses, and see how far the water has dropped.
3 comments:
You don't have a basement. Where is the water accumulating? You mean you can see it getting closer and closer to the bottom of your floor? Yipes!
Right now, the water is mainly accumulating between our house and the Volkers', and completely surrounding the shed. When I started the pump, the water was just barely below the floor level on the shed, and water was soaking between the floorboards. The floor of the house, thankfully, is a foot and a half higher than that. The entire island would have to be evacuated before the water got that high.
Believe it or not, there are houses with full basements on the island. They are very, very, very well-sealed!
A lot of people around here have pumps (often more than one per household), because the soil in the vicinity tends heavily toward clay, so drainage conditions often leave something to be desired.
A couple of years back, we had a freezing rain storm that first took down a whole bunch of trees (in the process knocking out the power for almost everyone in the area) and then proceded to flood all the low-lying areas and basements while the mains-powered pumps were inactive. No small number of people were cursing the fact that they didn't have generators.
I guess you do what you can.
Post a Comment