Posts Tagged ‘wet basement’
Neighborly Advice
In our ongoing consultation with experts about the possible source of water on the basement floor, I reached out to the realtor who found this property for us. She consulted with her cousin who lives in this area and came up with the name of a home inspector for us.
I recognized the name as a neighbor who lives around the corner. He and his wife and one of their sons are the only people who have stopped by our place (1 time) on Halloween night since we moved here in 2012. He recently made a transition from Realtor to Inspector and after a brief phone conversation offered to come look at our place at no charge.
Cyndie quickly baked a batch of small hand pies to share as a thank-you. Turns out his wife is an avid baker. We have invited them to dinner to get to know both of them and visit without the agenda of formally inspecting our house. Informally, who doesn’t “inspect” a home they visit for the first time?
The general consensus about water issues around our house is that the landscaping should be updated to compensate for the settling that has occurred. We came up with nothing definitive to explain why our basement floor got so wet a week or so ago.
I have a new theory regarding the area around the geothermal lines that come up through the concrete floor. Those were added since we moved in and they cut through the slab. I don’t know how tightly that opening was sealed when all their work was done. It’s the first place I’ll check next time it rains.
There’s no rain in the immediate forecast for us. Snow is expected this afternoon, followed by days of Arctic cold temperatures.
A while back I think I mentioned we were going to meet a new volunteer for This Old Horse who wants to connect with horses closer to where she lives. In addition to loving horses, she happens to be a big fan of labyrinths and has a deep passion for trees. She told us her husband was home prepping logs for a house they plan to build on their land.
We intend to invite them for dinner soon, too. Their last name is Asher.
Really.
We are looking forward to making some new connections with folks living on this side of the St. Croix River. That hasn’t happened as often as we’ve hoped it might over the years.
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Hydrostatic Pressure
We have a new theory about the water in our basement and I have Cyndie’s brother, Ben to thank for bringing it to my attention. Ben described a situation he experienced where a rug was acting like a sponge to pull moisture out of his basement floor. That could easily apply to the soaked rugs we encountered on our basement floor.
Coincidentally, hours before Ben called I had taken pictures of an interesting phenomenon occurring in the paddocks. Rain that we received around Christmas saturated our predominantly clay soil. I am always amazed in the winter when liquid water gets pushed up to the surface by natural hydrostatic pressure (the pressure exerted by a fluid… due to the force of gravity) and then freezes. It seems counterintuitive to me that there would be liquid water near the surface in the winter.
Well, with the uncharacteristically warm winter we have been having, there seems to be more liquid water than usual.
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The darkened areas are “rivers” of ice that are forming where hydrostatic pressure is pushing water to the surface.
It would not surprise me if the water pressure in the ground around our foundation was pushing its way through the concrete in some way. We aren’t putting any rugs back down for the foreseeable future.
We happen to have a “lift system” to push basement wastewater up to the pipe that drains to our septic tank. After talking with the plumber on the phone, I looked into information on troubleshooting whether that pump was functioning properly. I admit that in the 11 years we have lived here, I’ve barely given that system a thought.
Apparently, it is recommended that an annual inspection be done to avoid major problems. Now we are considering having it checked for its first-in-a-decade inspection… whether it needs it, or not.
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Inauspicious Start
Our New Year started with an unwelcome surprise. It being the first day of the month, I went downstairs to check the date I had written on our furnace filter the last time I changed it. A hall rug on the way to the laundry room was askew and I attempted to slide it with the toe of one foot.
It didn’t budge. The chain of evidence my eyes collected with each successive glance around me triggered increasing alarm. The rug was soaking wet. There was a puddle on the floor in the laundry room. There was water all over the floor in the bedroom but it was dry in between.
I hollered to Cyndie that we’d had a flood in the basement. Luckily, the water was clean. I’d like to know if it was salty, but I wasn’t about to taste it. I’d heard the softener going through its regeneration process overnight. That only happens at long intervals because we don’t generally use a lot of water. My guess is that something related to the water softener was the cause but we failed to find any obvious clue as to where the water had come from.
The more we looked, the more saturated throw rugs we discovered. It was confusing because the floor was dry in places between wet rugs. We couldn’t find any signs of water leaking from somewhere above the floor level. It’s a big mystery to us.
We’ve decided to seek professional advice from a local plumber. Maybe we will help a local business start 2024 with unexpected revenue.
I opted out of the next-level cleaning Cyndie embarked on in the basement in order to try finishing my ethernet cable installation project that involved drilling a hole through one of our log walls. The drilling was a little tedious but once completed, the real challenge remained.
The roof hadn’t dried up at all since the last mix of freezing drizzle and snow had coated the shingles. If I could just make my way to the narrow slope of dry shingles under the eave of the main peak, I figured I could safely stand on the step ladder already straddling the lower peak.
I hadn’t considered the stressful tension I would subject my muscles to for the operation. By the time I made it back safely to the ground again, multiple muscles were letting me know they were not happy with my activity. I was so focused on completing the final steps up there, I didn’t notice the extent to which I was tensing up to balance, hold my position, and avoid losing my footing.
However, the cable routing was done. All that remained was to crimp one connector to finish. With Cyndie’s moral support and willingness to hold a light for me, I lined up those eight tiny wires and crimped the connector.
The WiFi repeater light came on, the named signals appeared in the list of known networks, and… I’m getting no connection to the internet.
Happy New Year 2024, indeed. Humph.
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Big Impact
In the end, the storm that started Sunday night with that quick downpour I wrote about in yesterday’s post reverberated throughout the rest of the overnight hours with multiple waves of thunder, lightning, hail, wind, and rain, and dumped so much water it overflowed our 6-inch rain gauges. We collected over seven inches of rain in about 18-hours. A little to our northeast, the official total was over nine inches.
That kind of precipitation in such a short amount of time tends to have a big impact. My commute in the morning yesterday passed flooded farm fields, filled ditches, and creeks flowing so far beyond their banks they looked like lakes. I precariously crawled my Crosstrek through two sections of local roads where water was flowing across the pavement and skirted around several medium-sized branches that had fallen onto one of the lanes.
While I was at work, Cyndie texted to report our power was out and water was puddling on our basement floor. The basement leak was a first in the time since we’ve been here. Time to check our gutters for clear and proper function.
News reports started to materialize depicting the significant impact of flooding in multiple communities near to us. Roads were closed, families evacuated from their homes, cars swept off the road and occupants found standing on their vehicle rooftops in the adjacent ditch. The way the valleys around local creeks flood after downpours brings to mind the historical flood I wrote about from when my ancestors lived nearby.
Surveying our woods after things calmed down yesterday, Cyndie found the boardwalk we created suffered some disruption.
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It’s just enough disturbance to frustrate us, but compared to a lot of other flood damage possibilities, not all that onerous.
I looked out the window and noticed an upturned stump I’d never seen before.
Luckily, that tree tipped away from our house and toward the woods.
Cyndie spent much of the afternoon moving furniture and mopping up in the basement. We still need to check the shingles for hail damage.
We are hoping no additional damage will be revealed and things will dry up before the next round of precipitation moves in.
A little peace and quiet would be a welcome change about now.
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Relative Something 