Aftermath

The last 2-1/2 weeks have just been a blur.  The heavy rains started just before Margarit and I were scheduled to leave on our 25th Anniversary trip.  We had to postpone that trip and instead spent the next several days taking shifts down in our basement.  Someone had to be there full time, 24/7, to run the wet and dry vacuum to control the water that was coming in.  At the heaviest flow, the water had to be vacuumed every 4 to 5 minutes.  Those nights spent sitting down there in the basement were extremely exhausting.  During the month of June we saw 10 inches of rain in the Edmonton area, most of that in the last week of the month.

We got a bit of a break with a couple of days of warm dry weather right around the end of June, but then the rains started up again, and we had to return to several days of taking shifts with the vacuum.  Finally the rains let up in early July.  Since then we have initiated an insurance claim, and started on the cleanup.

We took a few days to get a bunch of our stuff out of the way, including old furniture and lots of junk.  Then the insurance company sent in a crew and stripped the carpet out of our Rumpus Room.  They set up an industrial dehumidifier and we ran that for several days to dry things out.  This  room got wet due to water that entered through the floor.  The ground was so saturated that hydrostatic pressure was pushing the water up through cracks in the floor.  This was a separate issue from the main leak.  The water that we spent the previous 10 days vacuuming was coming through some failed plumbing in our bathroom, on the opposite side of the basement.  Fortunately there was no water entering my darkroom, and none of my photography gear was damaged.

The insurance companies are all very busy due to the high volume of claims.  We don't expect to see any repairs initiated for quite some time.  In the mean time, I need to get a plumber in to repair the failed drainage lines.  This is not covered by insurance and is my responsibility.  I can't wait for the insurance company to come and rip out the water damaged walls.  These walls need to be out of the way in order for the plumber to cut into the floor.  So I took it upon myself to remove two of the walls around our laundry appliances.  We will not replace these and just leave the laundry area open.  There is still a little more drywall, and also a vanity in our bathroom, that need to be stripped out of the way.  I will continue with this work myself, as the insurance contractor can not get to it for a while.  

We can't afford to wait for that as we if we get more heavy rain, we will have more water entering, and as a result we need to be around, all the time.  Once the plumbing is repaired and things dry out, we should not have any more leakage into the basement.  Then we can afford to wait for a while until the remaining repairs can be done.

In the meantime the upstairs is absolutely jam packed with all the stuff we moved out of the basement, despite four trips to the dump and a bunch of stuff donated to Goodwill.  Ryan and Braeden have been camped out on an air mattress in our living room as they had been staying in the basement prior to the flood.

On July 10th a heavy thunderstorm rolled through the city.  Fortunately it hit north of us and we only got a few minutes of heavy rain.  Other parts of the city suffered high winds, hail, heavy rain and flooding.  Many roadways were flooded and impassable, and power was out in parts of the city for a number of hours.  Then today, we got a milder version of that storm in our area.  There were high winds, marble sized hail, and heavy rain, but fortunately it only lasted for about half an hour.  The ground is becoming saturated once again, but so far we have not had any additional water entry into the basement.

So far the summer has been a total write off.  I will be glad when we get this situation under control over the next couple of weeks and can take a break from this and relax for a bit.  It would be nice to get away to the cottage and unwind, and maybe get out to visit more small town hotels for the Beer Parlour Project.