Back in November, shortly after our last post, our basement flooded. Technically, it flooded a few times in the span of a week or two; but the worst deluge approximated to five inches of water, wall to wall, in our 600-ish square foot cellar. We wouldn’t have even known about it had our tenant (whose unit has direct access to the basement) not knocked on our door after he opened his basement door and thought he could see water at the bottom of his steps.
Luckily, Trevor and I had been warned of this potential flooding issue (the basement had actually flooded about a week and a half before we viewed the house for the first time) so we had placed all of our belongings in Rubbermaid tubs and there was only minor damage due to general dampness in the basement. Our tenant, on the other hand, was not so lucky. He said in his five years of living in the house, the basement had flooded seven or eight times. He had some items stacked on top of pallets, but other items were unfortunately damaged (both from previous floods, and this instance).
You’re probably wondering, “Well, how did so much water get into your basement?” And maybe even thinking, “You guys were crazy for buying such a dump.” But we love our dump on Queen Anne. And we’re making progress!
We had a sump and sump pump before (when we looked at the house for the first time I had never even heard of a sump before—but now we’re seasoned pros!), but the pump had malfunctioned/clogged so the water wasn’t being pumped out as intended. We replaced it with a temporary pump, but ultimately took the money were were going to use for a new kitchen and dumped it into the basement in the form of an interior slab-cut footing drain.
Huh?
Long story short, Trevor and I demo’d all the storage framing in our basement ourselves (with proper safety gear! see below), as well as the walls forming what our tenant’s friends lovingly called the “Panic Room” (a creepy small room in the corner of our tenant’s half of our very unfinished basement); then Bodine Construction came, jack-hammered around the entire interior perimeter of the basement, dug out a 14″ deep trench, laid perforated pipe in the trench, covered it with river rock, then repaved over the rocks. They did a phenomenal job. It hasn’t rained in Seattle for eleven days (our rain has been replaced with fog instead), but it’s supposed to return in the morning, so I’m curious if the fix will prove worth it. I’m nearly positive it will. And if it doesn’t, I might cry.
Oh, and we discovered that when Bodine broke up our concrete floor, our house has no footing below its foundation! We were assured, though, that the dirt it’s sitting on is nearly as strong and densely packed as concrete and that our house isn’t going anywhere. Phew.
Overkill? If you saw our basement, you would understand.