h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

But not in a good way.

I took Poets off so I could get some things done before our Yard Sale, and to maybe get a decent night's sleep as we were getting up at 6am to set things up. We had constant, heavy rain for 8 days before, and the weather reports were saying that it would stop the morning of our sale, so we were hoping for the best. I went down to the basement at around 7pm to get some art supplies for making signs, and after getting that done, I baked some cookies.

Earlier in the day I had gotten a package in the mail, and TJ said he would take the empty box downstairs. Needless to say, when I got done with the cookies, the box was still there. A nag was in order, so I announced that I'd take the box downstairs myself. That's my sure-fire way to get him to do something. He was half way down the stairs when he called me. Water was slowly but surely filling the basement! We scrambled to get as much as we could off of the floor, and brought as much upstairs from the lower shelves as we could. TJ let work know that he'd be gone for a while, and we headed out to Home Depot to see if we could get a pump. Of course, they had nothing. We were told that they were getting a delivery at midnight, and to come back at 6am as soon as the store opened to get one. We drove around a bit after that to see if we could find anywhere else that was open, but it was too late. We headed back home to do what we could.

TJ started using the wet/dry vac, and I had a mop, but it was hopeless. TJ figured he'd have to make nearly 2000 trips up and down the stairs with the full vac, so what's the point? 2000 trips of 25 lbs. each ... I don't think so! We lugged more stuff upstairs, and had to wait for 6am. TJ stayed up to keep an eye on things, and I tried to sleep (I'm usless and horribly crabby without sleep, and he certainly didn't want to risk *that*!). I finally fell into a fitful sleep, and woke up at about 7:15 hearing a car door slam. I thought it was TJ, but no. I called him, and he said that Home Depot lied last night, and there were no pumps, and he was driving to different stores trying to find one. I pulled out the Yellow Pages and started calling stores while he stayed on the other line. When one store answered by saying, "Thank you for calling Farmingdale Home Depot. We have no sump pumps or shop vacs. How can I help you?" I figured it was hopeless and told him to come home. By then I knew my Mom would be up, and if anyone knows who does or doesn't have a pump, it's her. I called her, and sure enough, she said my younger brother has one. I called him, and it turns out he has *two* and he brought them over.

Turns out, quite a bit of Long Island flooded at the same time, so there wasn't any water removal equipment available anywhere! Our neighborhood ended up having quite a hum, as everyone had hoses snaking out of their houses with pumps running all day!

Thankfully, by the time my brother got there, we only had about 5 inches of water in the basement, and the pumps started rapidly draining the water. We spent Doobry draining the basement, and dragging out what we lost. Luckily, it was mostly packing boxes. OK, TJ doesn't say luckily, because they were his, and he had bought the heavy duty wardrobe boxes from U-Haul at $10 a pop, we lost 8. He figures we lost well over $100 in boxes, I lost a bunch of posters, and my old portfolio. Not to mention 3 years worth of hoarded boxes for our "big move." Not too bad! We seemed to be on the edge of the flooding that happened in the town at high tide. The ground was so saturated that high tide really made a difference! The guy in the half a million dollar house next door got 9 inches of water in his basement, and a block over had a couple of feet! But worse, folks who lived closer to the Bay actually got raw sewage!

Have I ever mentioned TJ's anal retentiveness? He's slightly compulsive about a couple of things, and one of them is laundry. He's got our laundry divided into so many sub-categories that I can never keep them straight. Well, he had put the laundry up on top of plastic storage bins we had down there to keep them dry, but as the water rose, some of the bins started floating, so the laundry started falling into the water. He brought me a soaking bag of towels, so we started hanging them on the line we have in the backyard (that we never use). It snapped, and the towels came crashing down. I had to laugh when he dropped to his knees saying, "Okay! I get it! I repent! Please stop!"

Once we got the water pumped out, it was still coming in, and TJ tried to make sandbags to keep it out, but it was coming in through the foundation, so there wasn't much we could do about it. He hadn't slept at all, so we made it an early night, I rubbed his aching feet and we were asleep by 1am. By Dontbry morning, the water had stopped rising, and we were able to finally say goodbye to the worst of the water! Poor TJ has aching shoulders from all the vacuuming, and my calves are aching from all the running up and downstairs! I think I need a weekend to recover from my weekend!

One of the good things out of all this was the fact that we were up very early, and actually got to meet a bunch of our neighbors! We *never* see them, and in the course of the last 3 years have only talked to 2 of them. Being awake during the day has it's benefits!

So, the Yard Sale is on for next weekend, and maybe we can finally get things back to normal. Okay, normal for us anyway ...

I just read this in my friendly, neighborhood news website:

From Monday, Oct. 10, until Saturday, rainfall amounts ranged from nearly 16 inches in Lynbrook to nearly 18 inches in Wading River, the weather service said.

Shea... having been the victim of three inundations myself - two at home and one at work (remember the great Cheapo flood of ought-one? ), I'm cringing as I read this Consider yourself very lucky though in that a) you weren't flooded by a river, which hopefully therefore means little in the way of mud, and b) that it was the basement rather than the living area that was flooded.

I'd have paid a lot of money to see TJ kneeling in the yard with the wet towels though

And don't forget c) the basement isn't the living area

That's an even better plus to moving than I won't be hosting Thanksgiving this year

Glad you guys are OK.

Well, at least the basement floor will be really clean now. Good to hear it was mainly boxes and such.

This is very strange - I thought sure I'd posted on this thread last night.

As someone whose basement has flooded or partially flooded several times, I can assure you that flood water isn't very clean.

Well, it wasn't exactly sewage, but it wasn't very clean. It was ground water vs. rain water, so it was dirty to start with, plus our basement isn't finished, it's got exposed insulation and it's pushing 100 years old, so it's a dirty area. We only use it for storage and we have the washer/dryer there. I just hope that the woodwork dries out and that we don't end up with a mold problem. The dankness has been making me sneeze, and I don't think I could live with it forever!

I know that we were very lucky, and I've always made sure to never rent a basement apartment because I know what can happen, what with living on an island an all.

Of course, this means TJ's even more convinced that the big tsunami is headed for us.

I'm grateful that I don't have a basement.

Shea, do you have a dehumidifier for the basement? That will help pull the moisture out of the place fairly quickly, and should help prevent the growth of mold and mildew.

If you don't have one, and since cold weather is coming soon (they tend to freeze up if the temperature is below about 50 or 60 degrees), you might want to try to rent one instead of buying one.

We don't often get much water in areas of the basement where it comes in contact with wood, but it's still happened a few times. So far, by using the dehumidifier, we've avoided mold and mildew problems.

We definitely have a dehumidifier, and it's been running non-stop since the flood. We need to empty it every few hours. We always have a lot of humidity on Long Island, so a dehumidifier is a necessity.

How does this thing work? All our external windows are moldy around the frames and it's disgusting. If I clean them, the paint comes off, too!

If it's anything like ours it runs in the corner of the room making a noise a bit like a fridge and computer combined and it collects the water in a tub at the bottom which you empty every now and then.

However it sounds like what you need is double glazing. Condensation on windows appears when there is a serious temperature difference between one side and the other, double glazing reduces this and therefore reduces the condensation, using a dehumidifier will only serve to remove all the moisture from your house making it feel intolerably dry and killing off any plants you may have!

My plants are zombies, they won't mind
I know we need double glazing, but it's council property, so we can't change anything...

We have double glazing but we still get mould on the windows and the sills and walls around them. We get mould on the flagstone floors too whenever it floods when we're away. There's a dehumidifier attached to the ceiling upstairs but we've never tried it. Do they cost much to run?

I sure hope not, or Shea may not be able to pay the electricity bill!

They basically work sort of like a refrigeration system in a fridge or air conditioner, so depending on the size of the dehumidifier, they'd cost about the same to run as a comparably sized refrigerater or air conditioner. Comparably sized, as far as how many BTU's, considering energy efficiency and all that, that is.

I've never had a dehumidifier, but I've had humidifiers several times in the winter, because of the way my furnace dries out the air...

I can't figure out where ours would put the water, because it's in the ceiling.

It probably sends the water through a wormhole to the raincloud that constantly hovers over that comic strip character.

The dehumidifier in the ceiling probably drains to someplace outside the house - perhaps directly into a roof gutter?