[MountainMomma]

Ok....this is what I posted on a couple of boards (mainly just the ones I host) this morning:

Ladies, I'll probably be MIA a good bit today. It's been raining all night and all day. My basement flooded and there is something wrong with my pump! It won't activate on it's own so I have to keep manually kicking it on every 5 minutes or else the whole basement floods in no time. (It was knee deep at one point. UGH! Hopefully the rain lets up soon and we can figure out what's wrong with this stupid pump. Until then, I'm getting a great workout on the steps! lol



There is supposed to be some major flooding about 12 miles south of us where DH's grandparents live. If we end up down there helping move stuff or even just checking on them (phone lines keep going down) I might end up with some flood pictures later.[/b]

4 hours later I posted this:

Flooding basements are exhausting. I'm pumping 5-10 gallons out of my basement every 5 minutes or so. That's 60 - 120 gallons of water an hour. I've been at this since 9:30 so that translates to 240 - 480 gallons so far today. And trust me, it's much closer to the 480!

I'm seriously considering carrying my boxes of stuff up out of the basement and just letting it flood! I can go down and wade through the water every few hours to and pump it out so that it doesn't get too bad, but at least then I'm not making a billion trips up and down the steps! (Just go down, turn the pump on and wait for it to drain, then repeat every few hours) I don't even want to think about what they are going through down on the river!

On the bright side......it appears to be down to a light drizzle now, but the ground is so saturated I can still see water gushing into my basement through the cracks it is getting in through. Hopefully this is over soon![/b]

I have officially done just that. I carried the boxes out of the basement and stacked them in my laundry room. (thankfully there weren't many) I decided that the flood can have my basement. I'm sick and tired of dealing with running up and down the steps every five minutes!

[Brittanie]

Ugh, honey, I'm sorry you're dealing with this!!! I think I'd just let it flood too.

[MountainMomma]

And I forgot to add that ......


IT'S FREAKING RAINING AGAIN! I swear I just don't care anymore! I give up!

I figure if nothing else, when DH gets home we can swim around the basement for a while! *I have to laugh or else I'd just sit right down and cry!*

[Eleysia]

Awe Stehp Im sorry youre dealing with this right now. youre not kidding that sucks so bad.Hope it lets up on you soon. Maybe DH can figure out the stupid pump when he gets home

[jenn27]

hun. I'm sorry you are having such a bad day. Hopefully the rain will let up soon. That really sucks but I think I would have given up too. Hope your day gets better!

[MountainMomma]

My landlord used a jackhammer in the floor to make a big hole, put a bucket in the hole and stuck the pump in the bucket.(before I moved in) Here's the 3 gallon bucket (fills up about 10 seconds after the pump kicks off.)


Within a minute or so the water is already back up covering my toes again.


Here I added a red line to make it more visible. You can see the water trickling in around the steps. There are about 12 spots like this in the basement that I have found so far.


And here you can see my foot print inside the red box. Trying to show that there is between a quarter to a half of an inch of mud building up in my basement floor. I'll bet that eventually clogs the pump so it quits working entirely.

[mom 2 haley & tyler]

I'm sorry you're having to deal with that. i would have given up too. HOpe it stops raining soon!

[Jessica!]

I hated that crap when I lived in Wisconsin! My parents basement would flood all the time too. We didn't have pumps though. My mom used a shock vac to get all the water out. It was terrible.

I hope you get your basement all cleaned up soon! By the way, you can send your rain to Phoenix.

[~*Nessy*~]

OMG. I am sorry to hear about this. When we had the big storm last week I was just thinking about things like this. I was wondering what people who lived in 3/4 underground apartments and those who have basements do when it rains really hard.

What about a swimming pool pump. We used one to drain our swimming pool once and it went really quick. We had to rent it from a pool supply store for about $60

[MountainMomma]

I never thought about that. I might have DH disconnect the one from our pool for a bit when he gets home to help pump all the water out of the basement. I just want it gone! lol

[..Jessica..]

OMG Steph!!!!

I hope you guys are able to get rid of all that water!! I know there's a lot of flooding going on here too! This rain sucks!!!!

[HippyMomOf4]

I'm so sorry about the flooding girl! I hope DH can figure out something and get all that water outta there! It flooded here last winter and it was bad, really bad!

[MountainMomma]

Here's the news.
Rain in Southern Iowa
Highway 2 that it refers to is the main road through my town. Mt.Ayr (the town it talks about) is 15 miles west of me. I used to work there. Flood warnings have now been extended until midnight and it's supposed to rain every day between now and TUESDAY!

This isn't getting any better!

ETA: If you look at that map in that news story.....clear at the bottom there is one county in yellow. I live in the next county over, but right on the county line, so we are getting all that crap too.

Isn't it weird that down here in the south we are in a massive drought and others are flooding???

Send your water our way!!!

[MountainMomma]

I just have to laugh. They have spies placing the ads where they need to be on JM! I just opened this up to see what had been added and this was the add in the bottom corner!

WET BASEMENT ?

It is funny about those ads, I remember when Brany posted about their stolen bikes it had an ad for bikes.

I'm really sorry you have to deal with this, that hole should be a bit bigger and your landlord should replace it with a stronger pump. If he doesn't it will ruin his foundation and it will cost a whole lot more than the price of a good pump. Plus it brings damp into your home and then mold, not healthy at all.

I hope you get it sorted and don't have to deal with this again.