Serenity Now!

Well, my weekend was not what I had hoped it would be. I arrived home on Friday after work, and as soon as I walked in the door I knew something was wrong. I could smell wet carpet – never a good sign!

I made my way to the basement, and found that the sump pump that we had installed in January (after the old one failed resulting in a small flood) had failed, resulting in a big flood. Not good! I called the plumbing contractor who installed the sump pump, and they sent the same plumber that did the previous job. I had tried to get the pump working by jiggling the float, but it would not come on. He pulled the pump out and after working on it for about 15 minutes, managed to get the pump to start so he put it back in the sump and it started the process of pumping down the water that had built up in the drainage tile around the house. It took about 2 hours of pumping before the level of water in the basement started to drop significantly.

Here’s some pictures I took after the water level had started to drop:










So, neither my wife nor I were too happy about the job ahead, and since this was a bit more water than we had dealt with last time (in places this was 2 inches deep ) we made the call to our insurance company. Well, we called the broker first, but he didn’t call us back until late the next day (this broker is useless! ).

We called the insurance company itself, and submitted our claim. They in turn called a clean-up company, and they came out at around 10 PM to get started. By this time, the water had pumped down a good amount, and they sucked up what was still laying around. They trashed what carpet we had down there, and also spent hours sorting through wet stuff, and we had the option of having things sent to be cleaned, or having them trashed. It was an opportunity to do some spring cleaning at least.

They then set-up about 20 blowers and 4 big dehumidifying units. They had to bring in an electrician to take power from other circuits in the house to power all this equipment, and in the end they ran out of power so that limited the number of units they could set-up. Here is a shot of one of the blowers and a dehumidifier.



They left our house and we locked up at 3 AM Saturday morning. It was a long day!

It also sounds like there’s a small aircraft in my basement now, and through the weekend the humidity in the house was quite high, but it is dropping. It looks like the drying isn’t happening fast enough, and although it was clean groundwater that came in, there is a chance of mould happening, so we may end up getting some drywall replaced.

Since the weekend started off so poorly, I needed some Zen time. So, I did get out shooting in the back yard and taking some shots of the spring flowers around the house……

Here are some of our planted flowers:





The daffodils are nice this year. Also some nice periwinkle ground cover with purple flowers – I need to plant more of this:



Out in the bush at the back of our place, we have tons of trilliums. These are some of my favourite flowers (also our provincial flower). When we first moved here 10 years ago, most of them were white, but now we hardly have any white ones – most are this purple variety:



Great weather for shooting yesterday! It’s the shortest distance we shoot outside at 30 meters, but nice to be in the back getting some fresh air! This is where all the trilliums are, so have to be careful not to step on them.



Hey, I can still do this pretty well (sometimes……. ):



If only all my rounds were that good! LOL!

Anyway, it was an eventful weekend and it looks like the fans will be removed tomorrow, and then the repairs start. Unfortunately I will be stuck with the deductible on the policy, but I'll be talking with the plumbing contractor about covering that......we'll see how far I get with that one!

Hope you all had a better weekend that I did!