Now, before I get started I should disclaim here that I am NOT complaining - not even a little. Are we clear? Good…
It’s POURING rain here at the moment. The wind is howling, the power is flickering, the trees are bowing sideways and the rain is coming down in heavy sheets.
But it’s RAIN, People, not snow! Yippee!
The walls of the basement are doing their odd bleeding thing at the moment. It almost looks like a scene from a horror movie; the water sort of oozes from the cracks in the walls rather than dripping or coming from one identifiable source. Mr. Chili has set up a couple of fans to try to dry things out before it gets ahead of itself, but the sump pump is plugged in and ready to go if the fans can’t keep up.
That is, of course, if the power stays on.
It could be so much worse. In looking at the map, I see that there is a lot of white to the west and north of us, and WeedWoman called me yesterday to say that it was snowing to beat the band where she lives up in the hinterlands (her area was forecast to get feet of snow. FEET). We, though, are firmly planted in the green and, because of that, I am not complaining.
If the oozing turns red, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!
Do basements always do that? Not having spent any time in a basement (or even spent any time with anyone who owns a basement), all I have to go on are horror stories.
Hehehehe, Meno! I’m remembering an Eddie Murphy skit from many, many years ago (it may have even been his red leather period) when he did a bit about the difference between white people and black people. One of the things he pointed out is that we ONLY see white families as main characters in horror movies because white people are too dumb to recognize that the walls bleeding and swarms of bugs are good indicators that you shouldn’t live there. Black people hear “GET OUT” in an evil voice and they’re all like, “TOO BAD WE CAIN’T STAY!!!”
Teacher A, we’ve always had water issues, but no; having a basement doesn’t automatically mean having flood problems. Our foundation, though, was chipped LITERALLY out of ledge, so we’re essentially sitting in a big, stone bathtub. Once the ground gets saturated, the pressure in the rock is too much and the water finds the path of least resistence (as water is prone to do). Usually, that path is through the cracks in our basement walls. We can try to dig up around the foundation and seal those cracks, but I really do think this is a problem we’ll have for as long as we live here. Our washing machine and dryer are on blocks and almost everything is either up on shelves or in water-tight plastic bins…
Quick story: The first time we discovered that our basement was prone to flooding was upon our return from a vacation in ‘94. We’d been gone for a week - a particularly wet week, it turned out - and when I went downstairs to do laundry, I found water knee-high in the basement (we didn’t have a sump pump then). It would have been terrible - we lost a lot of our stuff - but all I can really remember is the fact that, when we moved in, the t.v. that I had in my apartment had been put on top of Mr. Chili’s sailboard. It was blissfully floating around the basement while I stood there, in shock, holding on to a hamper full of clothes.
I think that must have been on his RAW album. It was a riff about Amityville Horror. I’m not, as a rule, a Murphy fan but I love that bit.
YES! Thank you! I’m SO glad someone else remembered the bit because I’m forever pulling up references that no one else seems to get! That seems to happening to me a lot lately, and I’m glad that this isn’t one of those times…
Lucky old TV! Wow. My swimming under-the-sink cupboard (dishwasher sneakily emptying itself down a hole - or mostly down a hole - in there) pales in comparison.