Kayak Season

The rain just will not stop this year. Our whole county is having issues with too much water...even places that usually stay dry.

In the past couple days our gauge has measured about 6 inches of rainfall...and it's still raining. It's supposed to rain throughout the night, which means I'll be babysitting the sump pump to make sure it keeps ahead of the water. You guessed it: Eli is at work when this stuff goes down.

I can't say how incredibly disturbing it is to be standing in the kitchen stirring a pot of soup, only to hear water gurgling up the water pipes of the kitchen sink. It never backed up into the sink, but the sink would not drain for a long time if I ran water. There is just so much water, it has nowhere to go but up.

Our basement began filling with water again. At least this time there are no totes or boxes being ravaged. But it is apparent that this is a reoccurring problem. It has been a reoccurring problem that was not properly disclosed to us before we bought the place. This is also not our "forever" home, and plan to buy an acreage at some point. So we have a lot of work to do to remedy the problem before we can even think of moving on. It's very disappointing, to say the least.

If we had known that water comes back up the floor drain after heavy rain we would have bought the appropriate sewer back-up insurance--that would have covered the furnace. We have to install a check valve in the drain now to keep that from backing up anymore. The blower motor on the furnace is ruined from the last flooding, and a new one is being installed Monday. The blower motor will tell us if the rest of the furnace is toast or not. This could easily escalate from a couple hundred dollar issue to a couple thousand dollar issue.

The basement walls are literally weeping. If this isn't a creepy sight I don't know what is. It reminded me of a scene from a horror movie...or an action flick where someone is caught in an underground crypt that is being flooded by their pursuers. 

Someone should've warned us to buy kayaks along with the house! There are rivers, ponds, and lakes everywhere here! The water came up higher than I saw it get last time. I made the boys stay in the house today. Despite being soaking wet out, I could imagine curiosity carrying them away, and accidentally into the roaring creek. 

I took this video hanging out the school room window. On the far left you can see the creek rushing on the other side of the bridge and behind the garage.

By the time I walked outside to get this video, the water had started receding. It went down surprisingly fast, though water still seeped in through the saturated basement walls. It was up to the muddy spot beyond the firepit that I looked down at. It makes me wonder what kind of winter we're going to have!