Well, a tornado touched down in Brooklyn today. The national weather service confirmed that a tropical air mass dumped an extraordinary amount of rain in a short period of time. We got about 3 inches of rain in under an hour, which broke all sorts of records. I guess you can try to console yourself with these extraordinary facts as you are up at 6:00 am mopping inches of standing water from your basement floor…again…
First the good news—the two drains in the front of our house did exactly what they were supposed to do—the entire living room area was bone dry. And the basement wasn't as bad as it was the last time. Most of the water stayed in the gas, boiler and storage rooms, but some came down into Eric's studio area completely soaking about 100 square feet of his space and ruining yet another carpet. All of that water came into the gas room in the front of the house was a result of the main sewer line getting too much water too fast, so I'm not sure we could have done anything to prevent it.
The cap next to the P-trap, even though it was the right size and on tight, had water pouring out all sides through the gas room and down into Eric's studio. The storage room took a bit of water in from the sunroom but mostly flooded due to our neighbor's backyard drains flooding out and getting into our foundation. Again, we couldn't have done anything to stop this. But luckily this is the good neighbor and we spoke to them and they are planning on fixing their drains ASAP. The boiler room filled up because the fresh air grate let in tons of water and that overflowed and seeped through the walls. We already had a plan to do something about that.
As hard as it is to feel positive while mopping up buckets of mud at 6 am, there was some good in this. First off, we know what is working and what isn't. Cleaning the drains meticulously helped. We are scheduled to button up and caulk the sunroom on Sunday so that should give us some good results. We will also be filling in some gaps at the back of the house that water appears to be leaking through. We have a plan to cover the metal grate in the back to keep some water out and we will be buying a pressure cap for the sewer line. After the inspection we will install another sump pump in the front of the house. This needed to happen again for us to see our progress, but damn it was no fun.
Did I mention I hate water?
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