Indoor Pool
What a waste of a day so far… last night the cat came up from the basement soaking wet. Wouldn’t you know - the basement was flooding again. The cause this time was melting snow combined with a rain storm and a sump pump pipe clogged up with ice.
Melody and I spent almost 2 hours outside (until about 11pm) trying to chip away the ice and snow from the curb and find the outlet for the sump in the dark. We never did find it. The ice is still insanely hard - even though it had been above freezing for a few days in a row.
This morning I ran to the hardware store and grabbed a submersible utility pump and an extra length of garden hose and some waterproof boots. I lowered the pump into the sump pit and ran the hose to the sink which drains to the sewer. This may or may not be legal - but it’s just snow melt water and it’s only temporary. I really don’t have much other choice. There’s no where else to run the water and getting a hose out to the street from there would probably require 300 feet or more just to get out the door, up the hill, over the snow, etc. Plus it might just freeze again. Not worth it. 
The reason this has been killing my day, though, is that as it drains and empties the pit, the pit just slowly refills again from… somewhere. And since the utility pump doesn’t have any kind of water sensor on it, I have to keep stopping it and then checking it and starting it again. It’s a royal pain getting your attention interrupted every 20 minutes or so - not to mention I may not be able to go to the coffee shop this afternoon for fear of the basement flooding while I’m gone. How the heck am I support to be productive without my latte?
I couldn’t sleep last night because my mind was spending so much time redesigning the entire house to try to avoid these stupid problems. I can’t imagine how much my redesign would cost - but dang it, something needs to be done eventually. The previous owners claimed that they had only had “a little water in the corner” over the years. Yeah… I don’t buy it. We haven’t even lived here a year yet and the basement has been flooded several times due to weather. (A couple other times due to.. uh.. user error.. hehe.) But in any case, the significant problem is that the garage is basically at the lowest point on our property and of course water goes right in there and it gets into the drain system which eventually goes to the sump pit. And when the pump can’t work, it backs up into the basement. Our house has a single point of failure. I hate that. We could add a second sump and a second sump line and hope they both don’t freeze at the same time - but then still the fate of our basement is dependent upon having electricity to run the pumps. If the power goes out and it’s raining (like, say, during a heavy storm) - our basement will flood.
We need to find a real solution here.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Yeah, it’s freaking crazy around here. As soon as the temperature stays above freezing for more than three or four days in a row, this is gonna be the sloppiest, wettest and muddiest spring ever. At this point, it feels like the winter is never going to end. It’s supposed to snow twice more this week and be near 0 again…
I’d say at this point, your best bet is to fix up the house, sell it and buy a newer one. Locally, the housing market is ok so you shouldn’t have too much trouble selling it.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Dude.. we are seriously beginning to consider that… It’s a nice little house - but damn!
March 7th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Some houses have “bad bones.” No amount of fixing can help bad layout of the land. No amount of fixing can help that a house may have been built with a basement lower than the surrounding land, or even sewer.
Unless of course, you’re willing to pick the entire thing up, and move a lot of dirt. Bone surgery is expensive.
Our house has a driveway that can’t be fixed. No amount of earth moving will fix it, because of the layout of the land my house sits on. The only thing than can help the driveway of my house is a moving van.
Our house also has a basement (having a basement is the first problem right there!) that’s made of limestone. Limestone walls that are too short. And that leak. Putting a new basement under my house just wouldn’t be worth it. It’s not worth it, despite the fact that we’re got to rip a portion of it up this spring/summer to replace the sewer lines under it. The cost benefit analysis just doesn’t work out.
Enough houses don’t get torn down for that same very reason. It just costs too much to raze a house and dispose of it, and is much more economical to unload the house on to someone else, and just move in to something else, or build something else.
Home ownership: The American dream.