Why I Hate Water

[Areala]

I used to love water. Forty-eight hours ago, I'd have told anybody who asked that water was one of the greatest things on this planet. It keeps me clean, it keeps me hydrated, and it makes girls who are covered in it while wearing very little clothing look even more amazing than normal.

Then...water decided that we couldn't be friends anymore by declaring war on my home. I have had it up to here with water, and am tempted to start funneling large amounts of money into projects designed to convert enormous swaths of land into sand-blasted, cactus-withering desert. Now, water can go to hell, where it will probably be more than welcomed by untold trillions of individuals who have been begging for a simple drink these long millenia.

It started last night, with the rain. We noticed that the drain in our basement was, for some reason, backing up. This concerned us, because the basement drain should lead to a sewer line and not be connected to the storm drains and thus should be unaffected by a large amount of precipitation. We called out the plumber (for the love of God, if you live in the US and can possibly avoid it, you never, ever want to call a plumber on a Sunday after 8pm...), and as he attempted to snake out the drain, he encountered a fairly serious problem: roots.

Roots, as in tree roots. As in, this tree grew roots that broke into your sewer pipe and are now clogging everything up. And because the pipes are broken, rain water is seeping into it and exacerbating the problem. Wonderful. Tomorrow, we get the pleasure of watching a backhoe tear up our front yard in the hopes that the roots can be cut back and the pipeline repaired. And, of course, now that the sewer line is clogged, this means no showering and no flushing the toilet. Oh goodie. In addition to this, we have begun using towels to sop up the water that is coming out of the drain; it is annoying, but they can be washed so the problem is, for the time being, tolorable. The water level isn't really rising, so we figure this is just a temporary concern until it stops raining and everything can drain down again. Just to be on the safe side, we remove everything from the basement that is in cardboard boxes (holiday decorations, my comic book boxes, and so forth) and assume that we'll be just fine until Tuesday when the repair work can happen.

For water, however, this is just the initial volley of assholishness that it chose to lob in our direction. After tricking us into believing that we are, in fact, OK, water proceeds to turn around and gut-punch us in the finest tradition of the WWE when Rob Van Damme acts like everything is going to be fine, then spins around and flat-out decks Jeff Hardy for no reason whatsoever. (Note: Jeff falls for this every single time...almost like it's choreographed or something...)

Not content with merely preventing us from doing laundry, bathing, and using the facilities, water then decides that it is time to up the ante and begins to seep into the basement from the seam between the floor and the rear wall of the house. While at first this is just a trickle, and can be held at bay with a folded-up bath towel, things rapidly get worse as the trickle turns into a flow that completely saturates a giant towel in roughly ten minutes. Now, my girlfriend and I have all the pleasures of trading out sopping wet towels for dry ones, chucking the sopping wet ones in the dryer to spin the excess water out of them (which promptly drains into the basement drain, because it has nowhere else to go), and then throwing the spun towels into the dryer in the hopes that they will dry fast enough that we can swap out the freshly-saturated ones for semi-dry ones. This goes on for about an hour until I get the bright idea to call my brother, who has a wet/dry shopvac, and beg him at 10pm to please make a 45-minute drive to bring it to us so we can try and keep some of the water at bay. At the same time, Jessica is on the phone to her parents, begging them to bring over any towels they have so that we can reinforce our supply of dry ones and give the spun ones a chance to dry more before returning them to active duty.

My brother manages to show up in thirty minutes (I'm not going to ask how fast he was driving because I don't care) and delivers salvation unto us in the form of the five-gallon R2 unit that allows us to eliminate the problem of water being cycled around in our basement by letting us finally dump it outside. The three of us play bucket brigade for a few hours until he finally has to go home so that he can be up for work the next day; I have already called my manager at this point and explained that I will be spending my entire night sucking water out of my basement and dumping it into my yard, so I probably will not be coming in to work today. My manager asks if I have ever heard of a sump pump; I am tempted to ask if he has ever heard of the Son of Sam or the Yorkshire Ripper, but hold my tongue and inform him that we will be getting one installed as soon as possible.

Jess at this point is utterly exhausted, as she's not used to staying up past 10pm, so I tell her to go to bed and some rest and relieve me in a few hours. I myself tear into one of the two-litres of Mountain Dew: Code Red I have in the fridge for just such an occasion and proceed to have a good, long talk with the water about what a jerk it is being and how I would very much love it if it would call a retreat for a little while. Water gives me the finger and assures me that it can overwhelm whatever holding actions I perform, while I likewise inform it that whatever else it cares to dish out, I will absorb with cottony goodness and throw into the street where it cannot be used to harass us further.

At five in the morning, Jess comes downstairs to relieve me, and I crash for a couple of hours while dreaming, naturally, of being in a house with a flooding basement (paging Dr. Freud...). Jess gets me up at 7am to tell me that it looks like things are getting better, and I go down to take a look. Sure enough, the water is slowing down its assault on the seals of our foundation, and the drain can be vacuumed out less and less often. Not perfect, but it'll do. We both lay down again, set our alarms for two hours, and get up to take another look.

At 9am, water decides it has had enough, knows when it has been beaten, and surrenders. The fresh towels we throw on the floor are still dry fifteen minutes later when we look. Jess calls her parents and asks if we can come over to get cleaned up and use their washing machine to actually wash some towels instead of just spinning them and drying them, and they are more than happy to oblige us. We come back home refreshed, and fall back into bed for a few hours before the sun gets too annoyingly bright and I have to get up because I just cannot sleep any longer.

I am still very mad at water. It will take a long, long time for the two of us to patch things up. But I want to declare, here and now, that water has not beaten us and should it decide to test my friendship again, I will be ready with a fresh batch of towels and a wet/dry vac of my own, a sump pump, a battery back-up sump pump, and some sort of foundation sealant to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

*huggles*

Areala

[Phillyman]

I can only imagine your pain, I moved my room into the basement when I was still living with my parents. I always had the smaller room upstairs, which was the size of a queen size bed. Anyways I had to deal with heavy rain flooding my room and the water heater going kuput. Lots of dealing with a shop vac and box fans to dry out the carpet. When my girl and I go to move out of our apartment, I am looking for a place with a nice big basement....so that I can build an arcade down there. I will not stand for water coming anywhere near the items I wish to place in that room (arcade cab, pinball machine, slot machines)

Good luck, hopefully no magazines got wet

[atik]

Wow, that sound's like a nightmare and totally exhausting too. Seem's like you're really prepared if thing's go south again though.

I still think it's not too late for you and water to work thing's out however. Maybe you could try some form of mediation Areala.

[Data]

I hope you hired professionals to deal with this situation. They need to call the power, telephone, gas and water companies to find where all their lines are before they start digging. I've seen a few episodes of Holmes on Homes where a family moves into an old house that needed some work done and they hire a contractor who gives them a great price but later discover that they really don't know what there doing. I never heard of roots growing through abs (plastic) pipe but I guess it can happen. Where your walls are seeping water from the outside seems more serious than the plumbing but all together this is a huge job.

Where there is water, there is also mold which in recent years has been proved to be the cause of many serious illnesses and respiratory problems. The water is not draining away from your house which could be caused by a lot of reasons. I only hope you are renting this place so you have the option of walking away.

[Kitsune]

Yikes! I am sorry to hear about that, Areala. I can't say much that hasn't been said, but I do hope things improve and that there is no lasting damage. And that you and water can get back on good terms again. ^_^

[Areala]

I hope you hired professionals to deal with this situation. They need to call the power, telephone, gas and water companies to find where all their lines are before they start digging. I've seen a few episodes of Holmes on Homes where a family moves into an old house that needed some work done and they hire a contractor who gives them a great price but later discover that they really don't know what there doing. I never heard of roots growing through abs (plastic) pipe but I guess it can happen. Where your walls are seeping water from the outside seems more serious than the plumbing but all together this is a huge job.

Where there is water, there is also mold which in recent years has been proved to be the cause of many serious illnesses and respiratory problems. The water is not draining away from your house which could be caused by a lot of reasons. I only hope you are renting this place so you have the option of walking away.

We are dealing with professionals, trust me. They've already gotten the yard marked off by the various utilities. These are people my girlfriend's parents have been using for years in dealing with issues like this, and we're looking into getting someone out to give us estimates on waterproofing the basement. From what I understand, the city sewer pipes are not ABS plastic but are concrete, which is prone to breaks and root intrusions. Indiana has a pretty serious problem because we're only a few feet above the water table. We're not under it like New Orleans is, but it's not terribly far under the ground. Driving around here, you'll notice that virtually every housing development, apartment complex and condominium grouping has a giant lake in its vicinity. This isn't done for landscaping reasons, it's done so that when they start digging deep holes for foundations and the like, the water has a big reservoir to drain into.

We've purchased this house, so walking away is not an option, but this is the first time this has happened in the months we have lived here and been working on it. We got some pretty heavy rains in the summer and never had this water problem, so we're hoping this can be easily fixed with a mixture of some basement sealing and some sloping concrete along the foundation to funnel the water away from the house. Nothing got ruined, thankfully, and we'll be prepared to deal with it in the future.

Stupid water...

*huggles*

Areala

[Mister Zero]

I have had it up to here with water, and am tempted to start funneling large amounts of money into projects designed to convert enormous swaths of land into sand-blasted, cactus-withering desert

Don't worry, this is currently happening every day now in China. Northern China is quickly becoming a vast desert.

Tomorrow, we get the pleasure of watching a backhoe tear up our front yard in the hopes that the roots can be cut back and the pipeline repaired.

I'm so sorry you have to do this. It sounds like it's going to be very expensive(usually $3K+). If at all costs, have someone fix your basement foundation instead of just covering it up or only filling the cracks. They have certain tools these days that can fully lift your walls back to where they should be and hold them there.

[E-Day]

Don't hate the water. It's the roots that caused the problem. Support the cutting down of trees!