Quick Basement Update
Posted on March 17, 2005 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
For those of you wondering: It was a busted sump pump, not an actual busted pipe. Which is good because a busted sump pump is easy to fix, whereas a busted pipe (depending on where it is), not so much. We broomed out much of the standing water ourselves and then let the pros come in and handle the rest, and now we’ve got three very large blowers downstairs drying the place out (see picture). And of course, now we have a new sump pump.
We had some water damage to stuff we had stored down there but not as much as there could have been, and we used the opportunity to junk some stuff we’d been meaning to get rid of anyway. We’ll have to see what the final bill is, but overall, if you’re going to have a domestic disaster, this seems the way to do it.
Ugh. Invest in a dehumidifier asap. We had that happen in my basement and mildew seems to form under the carpet in about 10 minutes. Of course, I suspect the ambient humidity in Georgia is a little higher than Ohio…
Had a sump pump disaster myself 2 months ago. Luckily, the water didn’t rize high enough to blow out my PC which sits on the floor in the basement. (Well,not anymore, it doesn’t). It wasn’t much fun. After drying the carpet, it smelled like socks that had gotten wet on feet and dried. Had to run the carpet cleaner over it a couple times. After a few days, all was (apparently) well.
We had ice form under our roof this winter, which led to water dripping into the kids’ rooms. When we were all said & done, we had a blower that looked *exactly* like that in each room. You’re lucky – at least in the basement, you can leave it on 24×7. We had to shut it off at night so the kids could sleep, so it took longer to dry everything out.
The joys of home ownership…
Well, I guess this is one of those advantages of not having a basement at all.
Of course, all that junk that would normally be in the basement has to live in my garage instead, where the neighbors see it everytime I back out my car. Oh well.
Back in the mists of time I remember cursing at a very early version of MS-Word because it didn’t have “sump” in the spellcheck dictionary. I was writing something about getting a new sump pump and having a sillcock installed.
Thank goodness they’ve fixed sump.
They still don’t have sillcock in the dictionary though — at least as of Office 2003.
Meanwhile, swab the basement and everything in it with bleach to prevent mold.
“Meanwhile, swab the basement and everything in it with bleach to prevent mold.”
We let the pro cleanup guys handle that — that way if mold shows up, they are contractually obliged to come out and do it again.
Can somebody explain for this Brit what a sump pump is, and what it’s necessary for? I find the idea of living in a house that needs some kind of pump to keep it from flooding somewhat alarming …
Basements don’t get flooded in the UK?
The sump pump simply makes sure that in the event of heavy rains or burst pipes or whatever, that your basement is efficiently drained rather than left with several inches of standing water (in our house it has some ancilliary connection with the water softener — which was the root of this particular issue — but I’m still not entirely sure what that is).
By and large we’ve had very little call for the sump pump in the “flooding due to heavy rains” sense; our house is on a hill and water drains away (and the water table is well below our house’s bottom level). But our area does get occasional flooding (see here), so it’s not inadvisable to have a pump, just in case. So long as it actually, you know, works.
Hi…
I was doing some google search for basement dehumidifier and your site came up..
Well, if I’m reading the post correctly… it looks as you guys are in need of a GOOD sump pump systems rather replacing a pump if it gets broken and stuff.. you need a reliable one where you don’t have to replace it too often..
there are several UK basement systems dealers using the perfect sump pump systems. Triplesafe is one of them, where you have three pumps for extra protection so your basement is dry ALL THE TIME. http://www.triplesafesumppump.com check out the pump’s specs… also lol the dehumidifier in this picture is really old school. you might want to think about upgrading to a Sanidry Dehumidifier… you will be able to tell the difference right away… i can guarantee that :)
good luck
My basement flooded last year, it took me 3 months before I took a look at it, it was covered in mold. That was a life lesson in procrastination.
-Brendan