There’s a reason I’m not a contractor. What I thought was flooding is apparently “minor seepage”. The contractor noticed that the float had somehow become disconnected from the sump pump and it wasn’t turning on to shift the water outside to the water main, which caused the water to flow into the basement through the boring hole. What I thought were leaks in the foundation turned out to be the lowest points in the basement and thus where the water was pooling. First thing he did was fix the sump pump and less than 30 minutes later almost all of the water was gone from the basement. I got the “it doesn’t matter what time of the night it is, you should have called immediately” lecture – so I’ve warned him I’ll be calling in the middle of the night should it happen again – and then the basement was loaded with industrial heating fans to dry it out.

The walls have been inspected for water damage and the baseboards and vents removed to check for any sign of water in the walls. So far, it’s looking good. The list of repairs turned out to be pretty minor (and affordable) and began yesterday. By the sounds of things, they should be finished up today.

We’ve got a to do list for outside when the ground dries enough to do some digging, but he thinks that can hold off until the hubby gets home to lend his arms and back to the digging process. Being your own manual labour helps keep the costs of repairs down 😉

There’s no sign of mold in the basement and the last flood was many, many years ago (the previous owner’s son lives in the house next door and grew up in this house) so it doesn’t appear that this is a common problem with the house. The sump pump was added to the house after that watery experience. The end verdict appears to be that had the sump pump been working properly at the time, the water wouldn’t have been all over my basement floor.

As for my poor neighbour, he had one of the few basements on the street that didn’t have any water seepage and was kept busy running from house to house inspecting the damage. Guess there’s no such thing as a weekend off when you’re a contractor living in Edmonton.

There’s a tonne of clouds in the sky and it looks like it may soon rain again so I’ll soon know the quality of the repairs…

Technorati Tags: water damage, flood, sump pump, contractor, neighbours

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.