In the never-ending battle between us and the house, the house is most certainly kicking our ass. Worse off than us are our second floor tenants, who've have to endure a litany of problems over the past week. Last Friday their kitchen sink had a bad leak, which Eric was luckily able to fix after a couple of hours. Then on Saturday their through-wall AC died, which is to say it turned on but no cold air came out. Inexplicably, we had just examined it the day before to fix another leak, but it chose the next day to croak. Not exactly useful in this 90-degree, 100% humidity weather we are having lately. I was able to get a replacement AC sent since it was still under warranty, but not until a couple of days later. Then to cap off this fantastic weekend, the tub in the third floor apartment had a bad leak which caved in part of the ceiling of the second floor bathroom and got water and mess everywhere.
What we figured out after a few hours of troubleshooting on Sunday is that the 3rd floor tenants can shower just fine with no leaks to the second floor, but if they fill up the tub and then let it all out at once, the pressure of all that water is too much for the drain to hold and all the water comes pouring out. Currently there is a hole in their ceiling while we try to find a plumber who can fix that issue.
Late on Tuesday we got the replacement AC and Tim's guys came over the next afternoon to install it, so that was a huge help in getting us back into the good graces of our second floor tenants. But by Wednesday we were already ankle deep in another huge issue.
Wednesday early morning there were bad thunderstorms and when I woke up I went downstairs to feed the cats. I stepped off the bottom stair into the kitchen only to be greeted by about 2 inches of water covering the entire floor. It was mind-bogglingly bad. The water seemed to have leaked in from the door below the stoop and even though there is a drain there, the drain got all clogged up with leaves and debris so water just flowed into the house, into the living room and all the way back to the kitchen, some 40 feet away. Water soaked through the wood floor and the insulation, through the sheetrock and into the basement. Water also poured down the stair opening. It was literally everywhere and unstoppable.
Our sunroom which still has some big gaps that are high on the agenda to fix was soaked in water. Again, there is a drain there but water appeared to soak through the floor and into the foundation, down in the back of the cellar. Water from the front of the house leaked into the front of the cellar so as you can imagine the cellar was pretty bad. There were some places where there was 5 inches of standing water, and other places where there was only 2 or 3. Our sump pump was installed and caught about 10 inches of water in its barrel, but since the pump wasn't plugged in the water was just standing.
We got the pump plugged in and mopped countless numbers of buckets of water out of the cellar, surveying what was soaked (everything) and what was damaged beyond repair (all the rugs, some boxes, Eric's computer monitor and one of his very expensive mixing speakers) We spent the rest of the day throwing things out and trying to clean out the cellar, a task that was pretty much impossible given how much crap there is down there and how little space there was to move around. Around 9 pm we gave up, everything pretty much dry but disorganized, with the two of us thoroughly exhausted and demoralized. We've got plans to fix the sunroom soon, put a beefier drain below the stoop (which will require digging up the tile, so not an easy job) and to seal the unfinished walls in the basement with something that will help stop the leaks. However, we see bad thunderstorms and flood warnings in the forecast for the next 2 days, so it's not looking good. People say they are afraid to call me and ask how the house is, that whenever they talk to me something bad is going on. Sigh. Don't you think I wish I had some good news to report?
Ack! My heart aches for you. I can't imagine dealing with all those problems in such a short period of time. I wish you tons of cash to get you through this tough time!
Posted by: Andrea | July 26, 2007 at 12:31 PM