the summer flood

Originally uploaded by FuzzyKryton

When John called me at work and said that it was raining in our basement, my first thought was to look outside to see how bad it was raining. Then I realized it was not actually rain! Our washing machine apparently decided to NOT stop filling and left water to cascade out onto the floor.

Thankfully John was at home when it happened! He had thought about running out to do dome errands after he started the washer but figured he would wait to run to the bank etc. He did not realize we had an indoor pool until her heard a splash. he looked into the kitchen to see a wet Silver. The cat either jumped from somewhere and landed in the water or came running up the basement steps and hit the water that was on the kitchen floor.

Once the washer was turned off, John started throwing towels on the floor to try and sop up some of the water. By this time, the water was everywhere in then kitchen and starting to get the living room carpeting.

Then he headed to the basement to see how much may have leaked down there. He was not expecting to see the waterfalls that he did! It was coming down in several places and by this time he was really not sure which way to go first. There was water running down the pinball machine as it came in from above - the washing machine was right there. There was also a waterfall coming down near the pool table (the pipes etc for the ice maker in the fridge go through the floor there). The pool table actually had a pool on top of it. Thankfully the plastic cover was covering the table. However the one corner that has a rip in it was near that end of the table and some water was able to get underneath. The laptop was sitting on the other end of the pool table, just 2 inches from the water! however the boards for the portable poker table were on the pool table and were sitting in water.

It also was leaking down from the stairs. The water has starting going down the basement steps and just leaked right through the seams between the boards. The computer that was under the stairs is the main server, not sure yet if that was damaged, however the laptop that was under the table had water pooling on it.

It was then that he saw the cascading waterfall coming down the shelves where a bunch of Darrin's toy's were. This again is basically right under the washing machine...

Since I was at work and I knew that he was busy with the water, I called the insurance company to see if this was covered. Our agent was not in the office, but the receptionist pulled up our policy and said that we were covered for water damage caused by failed appliances! At least that was a good thing. She gave me the number for the claims department so that I could call once I got home to see the damage. Instead of waiting, I called John and gave him the number so that he could call right away and open the claim.

By the time I got home, it looked like someone's closet exploded on the back deck. We had one clean/dry towel left in the entire house. The rest were out on the deck along with all of the dirty laundry that had been on the floor in front of the washer (3-4 loads worth). Now it was WET, dirty laundry.

The insurance company was already working on everything for us. The adjuster had made a call to the Estimator who was on his way to our house! Once he got there, he showed us just how wet the walls and everything were. He put in a call to his emergency crew to dispatch them to our house to start the process of getting everything dry. They are also going to move the washer and dryer so that they can get the floor dry under it. He was also going to call someone to come out and check out our furnace to make sure there was no damage to that, as well as the dishwasher that had water leaking around it.

Between the time he left and his crew got there, we were hurrying to try and get some of the sopping wet laundry spun out and at least dried somewhat so that we could haul it out to wash it.

Once the crew of 2 got to the house, they went right to work pulling up wet carpeting, moving the washer and dryer out to the garage and pulling up wet vinyl. By the time they left we had 7 large blowers and 2 HUGE dehumidifiers going to pull out the water and dry the floors and walls.

We were warned that the fans were going to be loud... loud was an understatement. Also, with the dehumidifiers, it was going to make it warm in the house. Seeing as we have to keep the house closed up so that the equipment is not trying to pull in the moisture etc from outside, we opted to NOT stay in the house. We were heading to Dan's for at least the night, where we could also do our mountains of laundry!

We will post more updates once we go back to the house and talk to the insurance agent.