It's Raining Again

Ha! That one's for Chrissy.

For the longest time most of my posts had song references in them, if not in the title. And they were often in the title.

But the point here is that this has been the wettest first 6 months of the year on record here. Which hasn't been a problem for us, as we're at least 60' above the nearest creek.

However, we've had some water leak into the basement. Which is finished. So it gets in the carpeting.

It's not huge amounts. But man, it takes forever to dry, even after you suck as much water up as you can with the carpet cleaner vac. Last time (like 2 weeks ago) it took about 5 days to dry completely. The smell's not good. Musty. It really bothers Vicki. I'm not elated about it myself.

This only happens when it rains A LOT. But I think I've figured out what is causing the "pressure" that's findint the weak spot. Could be a combination. The discharge from the sump pump is probably too close to the house. And this morning I found that back gutter full of pine needles. The gutter ends right where the backslope from the front of the house meets the hip that makes up the roof for the back of the house. The gutter runs along that hip. And the leak... the leak in the basement is pretty much right below that junction. Since the gutter isn't taking the water my guess is that it's gushing down that valley and dropping on the ground right below that, leaving a LOT of water that needs to drain away from the house ... but apparently can't do it fast enough.

I must've missed that back gutter when I cleaned them last fall.

So we've got fans going full blast down here drying it out. I'm going to make an underground discharge pipe for the sump pump outside this weekend, and also make a PVC riser... so we don't have to use so much flimsy sump pump hose. It wiggles and vibrates and gets holes in it to easily, and the weight tends to pull the hose back into the area under the house, drawing the end of the hose closer and closer to the house over time. It's been known to get pulled all the way inside. And that's not good.