Out for a few more days

[Poseidons Voice]

Amir,

Quick recovery wishes for your wife! Feel awful and concerned this happened but you are a smart chap who will find the solutions. Take care and get some rest. ASR can take a pause in the meantime - thanks for the updates!

Best,
Anand.

 

[KxDx]

Damn! I'm sorry for all that coming down on you. I hope everybody comes out ok!

 

[jannek]

What a mess. Take all the time you need. Hope the swarm intelligence of internet forums proves itself once more to be helpful - there's always someone with knowhow or experience.

 

[Soniclife]

What a horrible start to the new year, hope you get past it soon.

 

[CerealKiller]

So sorry to hear that!, I hope your wife gets better soon and you two can manage that flooding disaster without further complications, making a small contribution to you now so it will be of any help to the cause. Get better!

 

[Triliza]

I also bought an ozone generator to kill bad stuff in combination with the blower.

Not to add more to your problems and maybe the device you bought can regulate the amount of ozone it produce, but high concentrations of ozone can be harmful:

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/factsheets/Pages/ozone-generators.aspx

Not to add to your expenses either because I'm not sure they can be of any help for your situation (and in general), but consider buying an air purifier also, supposedly it can filter out harmful pollutants from the air and remove any possible bad smells.

 

[JohnnyNG]

Damn, best of luck with this flooding. You don't need a handyman, you need an ark-welder!

 

[calugg]

Hello you all. You probably noticed I have been away from the forum a few days. Last Thursday the finished lower floor of our house which is below grade developed a leak. This quickly became a massive flood, overwhelming our efforts to keep it at bay. To make matters worse, near midnight, my wife slipped on the wet stairs and badly injured her back side and elbow. So we spent the next day at the hospital and thankfully, nothing was broken but she has been in serious pain (but getting better). We had two days of dry weather which gave us a chance to repack things of value but then the rain came and multiple flooding with it. We would spend 12 to 16 hours pumping and drying out the floor, only to get fully overwhelmed in a matter of hours.

I have bought every pump and gadget you can think of but none of them are effective with shallow flooding of quarter of an inch of water (seeping through the walls). Actually it has been so bad that in the time it takes me to go to the hardware store to buy the next thing, the house been flooding completely again! No restoration company would come to dry the house because the leak is still there. So stuck doing it all ourselves.

My builder called a crew with excavators and such over the weekend and they showed up Monday, only to make it worse and leave. So last two days has been more rounds of hell. I was drying and pumping the house for nearly 20 hours straight last nigh as the non-stop rain caused it to flood again and again! A more competent crew is here and is building a much more extensive water management system. Hopefully they get it done and it works.

Getting help of course in this environment is next to impossible. Had a great handyman I had used on other projects but he wouldn't come over to help either.

Anyway, starting tomorrow it is supposed to dry out for a few days so maybe this insanity will be over by the weekend.

I have only been able to drop in the forum for a minute or two per day. Just so much to do.

Holy CRAP! I'm so very sorry. Please take your time. We all can wait. Sending you best wishes from the east coast!

 

[mash]

Sorry to hear this.....best wishes to you and your wife! Take all the time that you need.

We can just open a new topic on MQA and argue about that for the next 2-3 weeks while you get things fixed and your wife recovers.

 

[Biblob]

Some humor to lighten things up:
Seems that buying cable lifters would have a use after all...

Best wishes to you and your wife. Health and family is the most important after all!

 

[iraweiss]

Best wishes for your wife's quick recovery.

To alleviate our basement water problem we had:

1. A trench dug inside perimeter of the basement walls and the basement repair company filled the trench with a pipe that takes the infiltrating water to a
2. Sump pump that carries the water outside and a
3. French drain outside along three sides of the house (the fourth side is the attached garage) and then the
4. Basement repair company coated the exterior walls with whatever they use to seal it and then I
5. Painted the interior basement walls with Drylok

That with improved sloping from the house and maintaining gutters and downspouts seems to have taken care of everything.

On the other hand while both of us were out for less than 45 minutes, we had the pipe from the wall to a second floor toilet break. Insurance covered most of the repairs including replacing drywall and we paid additionally for upgrades to replace flooring in a bathroom and kitchen and laundry. The restoration company had huge fans and dehumidifiers in the bathrooms, kitchen and basement where the water ended up. All for a plastic pipe that failed.

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Although I am pretty new to ASR, I have read enough to want to wish you and your wife a speedy resolution to this awful situation.
Very Best Wishes

 

[roog]

Sorry to hear of your plight Amir, best wishes to you both and I hope that you can sort your water ingress issues as quickly as possible.

 

[Herbert]

OMG, Amir, best whishes for your wife!. My brother, who shares your surname, narrowly missed disaster in the German Ahrtal mentioned in a post before. I have just isolated the cellar of my house because hard rains will become more and more likely. Last summer we found out that water leaks in, so it got dug out in the autumn. But the company did the isolation against moisture and water so bad that I am fighting for extended warranty. They only put on one layer, two are mandatory besides the fact that the thickness of the layer has to be measured and recorded. A TotalDAC - level of craftmansship. Insurances against natural disaster will very likely become mandatory in Germany.

 

[Bsmooth]

New here as well with first best wishes to both of you as well. I live in an old house on a hill, and everytime it rains about an inch of water I get water in the cellar. I have the aforementioned small hole about a foot deep down one end of the celler, but I still get about an inch of water in the whole cellar area.
A few years ago the sump pump failed, and a whole lot of water filled my basement, about a foot and a half actually. Something had clogged the pump, so in a foot and a half of water I had to take apart the pump and repair it, also had to drill out a couple screws which were frozen, eventually fixing it and getting the water levels down again.
So believe me I share your sorrow .
Sorry to go on, I know both of you well get thru this. But on the lighter side you will now know quite a bit about flooding, pumps and other things you probably never wanted to know in addition to your great audio reviews. I wish your family well.

 

[jbattman1016]

Good luck! in the same boat where we started having flooding in our finished basement... need to get someone to check it out this spring.

Speedy recovery for your wife

 

[Confused_by_tech]

Hello you all. You probably noticed I have been away from the forum a few days. Last Thursday the finished lower floor of our house which is below grade developed a leak. This quickly became a massive flood, overwhelming our efforts to keep it at bay. To make matters worse, near midnight, my wife slipped on the wet stairs and badly injured her back side and elbow. So we spent the next day at the hospital and thankfully, nothing was broken but she has been in serious pain (but getting better). We had two days of dry weather which gave us a chance to repack things of value but then the rain came and multiple flooding with it. We would spend 12 to 16 hours pumping and drying out the floor, only to get fully overwhelmed in a matter of hours.

I have bought every pump and gadget you can think of but none of them are effective with shallow flooding of quarter of an inch of water (seeping through the walls). Actually it has been so bad that in the time it takes me to go to the hardware store to buy the next thing, the house been flooding completely again! No restoration company would come to dry the house because the leak is still there. So stuck doing it all ourselves.

My builder called a crew with excavators and such over the weekend and they showed up Monday, only to make it worse and leave. So last two days has been more rounds of hell. I was drying and pumping the house for nearly 20 hours straight last nigh as the non-stop rain caused it to flood again and again! A more competent crew is here and is building a much more extensive water management system. Hopefully they get it done and it works.

Getting help of course in this environment is next to impossible. Had a great handyman I had used on other projects but he wouldn't come over to help either.

Anyway, starting tomorrow it is supposed to dry out for a few days so maybe this insanity will be over by the weekend.

I have only been able to drop in the forum for a minute or two per day. Just so much to do.

My condolences. I weathered similar events in the Ozarks at my parent's home in the basement. The only solution thing that brought lasting relief was extensive treatment /excavation and revision of the perimeter grade around the home. The remedy required about a specialized crew and about 6 weeks of labor but after completion of the project the basement remained dry as a desert for the next 15 years until they sold the property.

 

[Gouwa]

Take care!

 

[ezra_s]

Cheers amirm hope you can fix that soon and return to normal. Sometimes when it rains, it pours... hehe.

 

[Mike-48]

Best of luck, Amir! The only thing that kept our basement dry (here in Portland, OR) was adding a perimeter drain and drywell and re-routing the downspouts to lead to the drywell. But of course solutions vary by local geology, and we are fortunate to have a sand depoit starting about 4 feet down.