Recently I mentioned that we had had a lot of rain over the past couple of months, we found out that this in turn was causing a leak in our basement. We have no idea how long it had been going on, but we speculate it had been awhile. Once we realized that the carpet was wet the first few times we borrowed box fans from some friends of ours and dried out the carpet. After the third, and worst time we decided it was time to pull up the carpet, check for mold and assess the problem.

Luckily the carpet and trim were salvagable, but the carpet padding was drenched, and mushy, so we decided it was best to pull it up and throw it away. In the meantime the wall had this horrible texture on it that had literally broken skin and caused bleeding on numerous occasions to multiple people, so since it was just concrete beneath our feet, why not go ahead and remove the sharp texture and then repaint…while we wait for another large rain so we could find the problem.

As we had hoped, we got another good rain, and of course it would happen while Ryan was on duty (when big not so great things happen they typically tend to happen when he is gone…no joke…more on that later). So after finding the pools of water, and the leak from the window down the drywall (if we hadn’t removed the texture, we never would have seen where it had come from), I called Ryan at work and began to shopvac the standing water. He came home to help me in my efforts and began to cut out the block of drywall and insulation. Yup, as we suspected, the water was coming in from the window. How? Why? We didn’t know, but we would find out.

That same night I filed a claim with our homeowners insurance just to see if there was ANYTHING they could do to help us out. They sent out an agent to assess the costs of fixing and everything, then a few days later I got the call. “I am sorry Micah,  but the problem is considered ground water and we will not be able to cover it.” Well bummer! Not what we were hoping they would day, but knew there was a good chance that that would be the case.

Meanwhile,  while we were waiting to hear back from the insurance we did some tests of our own with the hose and found out that the drain in the window well was not draining (at least not fast enough), and the window well was filling with water when it rained causing water to seep into the dry rotted caulk around the window.

After we found out that the insurance would not be covering the damage, we took it into our own hands and fixed the problem, and then fixed the room. First, we lowered the drain pipe further away from the window, cleaned out the pea gravel that had fallen into the drain (seriously,  SO MUCH pea gravel it was insane!).

We ran our little fiber optic camera down the pipe and into the corrugated tube that goes to our sump pump. Found that the pea gravel had clogged up the holes in the corrugated tube and so we Jimmy rigged a utility knife onto the end of a broom handle and proceeded to cut a few more small holes into the tube to help with draining. Low and behold it did work, we did another water test and sure enough it drained much more quickly. Ryan also removed all of the old dry rotted caulk from around the window and re-caulked it to give it a better seal.

Now we wait for more rain… and it came, and the room stayed dry!! What a relief that was to us! Stay tuned for the next blog post about fixing up the room!! 🙂
Here’s a fun little snippet, while we were cutting out the wet drywall and drying the floors, Aveline was napping and Novella decided that Aila (our Scottish terrier dog) was hungry… this is what we came in to find… we couldn’t help but laugh. In a frustrating time, we found joy in this little girl and her desire to help. One of her favorite sayings is, “I be a big help to momma and papa”. Yes, sweet child, you are such a big help in more ways that you know. In this frustrating moment, you brought us laughter!

 

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”

~1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)~

 

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

~Matthew 6:34 (NLT)~