A Laborious Day

I hope everyone had a fantastic Labor day! Our Labor day was… well, interesting, and not at all what I thought it was going to be. I had big plans for the day to do some projects at the church (I’m working on an ikat stencil, exciting!!) but plans got a little derailed because of heavy rains. Normally, I love rain, but even for me, this was a little much.

What is interesting, is that August was really dry. In fact, it was the driest August on record in our area. We only got 1/100 of an inch of rain for the whole month! Amazing for this area. Then September came and on September 1st, it rained. It was like it was waiting for September to roll around and the heavens opened up. The problem came on Monday when it didn’t stop raining. We were catching part of the tropical storm Lee and we sure felt it. It was non stop rain from before we even woke up to after we went to bed. By 6:00 PM we had gotten about 8.16 inches and broken all previous records of the most rain in a 24 hour period (previous record of 7.61). By the end of the day we had gotten about 10 inches. That is some serious rain. So we broke two records in a matter of a couple of days. One for the driest and one for the wettest. Pretty crazy stuff.

Thankfully, we are doing well although I was wondering for a little while there if we would have some water damage. We live on a hill so we don’t usually worry about flooding but we do get a little bit of water in our basement occasionally. Yesterday, we got a bunch. We spent most of the afternoon and on through to Midnight (with a little break for dinner) trying to get the water out of the basement. There was so much water seeping in that we couldn’t stay on top of it. Thankfully, nothing got ruined and today the basement is pretty much dry. Here are some shots of our efforts, taken last night:

We spent a bunch of time trying to get everything higher. You can see the bricks under the freezer, trying to get it off the ground. We also set up a small barrier of garbage bags weighted down by wet towels to try and keep it contained. It might not look like very much water but when you see how fast it filled up this area, it had me a bit worried :) Especially since the forecast was calling for more rain.

Our main objective was to push the water to the drain which is under the work bench. You can see the towels leading to it. As long as we could keep the water moving toward the drain, we were okay. It was when we stopped that things started filling up more and more. Which is why we worked at it for so long, to try and keep the water flowing. It’s too bad our basement floor isn’t sloped toward the drain, that would have really helped :)

I was trying to get a picture to show how deep it was. It doesn’t even cover my feet but it sure felt like a lot of water since it covered most of the floor! Another thing we are thankful for is that it wasn’t cold. It was still in the 70’s yesterday so we were able to work down there barefoot in shorts. If this had happened in the winter, the water would have been really cold!

The other side of the basement. We tried to keep the water on the side with the barriers but some seeped over here. Then we found out it was coming in another spot on this side as well. Sometimes you just can’t win! Here Jason is taking a bit of a break after a full afternoon and evening of work.

And a shot of the library. Remember how nice it looked before? We had to use this room to store all the stuff that had been in the other room. The library got wet as well but once we diverted the water, we were able to clean it up and it stayed relatively dry after that.

All in all, it wasn’t that big of a deal but it kind of felt like it at the time. I’m very thankful to be on this side of it though. There were many places that had it much worse than we did. In fact, we couldn’t even really leave our house because all the roads around us were closed due to flooding. So this morning, we left to go to the church to see how it fared.

There is a creek that runs close to the church. It floods occasionally but I have never seen it this high. It filled up the creek and ran over the sides into our parking lot.

This is on the opposite side of the road. There is not normally any water here and now we have a lake.

In fact, it was deep enough that people were swimming in it! There were even some people with kayaks. Good times :)

This normally is our parking lot.

See it pouring over the road?!

Again, more parking lot. Thankfully, no water in the building. A lot of water outside though.

So there you have it, that is how we spent our Labor day. Laboriously emptying water from our basement. Fitting, isn’t it? :)