The basement flooded...AGAIN

Some background - 2 years ago, I arrived home with both kids to discover several inches of water in our finished basement. That set off a nightmare situation of dealing with the insurance claim, getting the waterlogged and damaged stuff out and the process of putting the basement back to some order. Perry took the opportunity to make a lot of changes in the layout and spent most of that summer working to make the basement a really great place to hang out.

Fast forward to today - I had literally just wrapped up a difficult and stressful situation at work that's been brewing all week. I had sent off the final e-mail and honestly thought "phew...it'll be nice to have a less stressful day!" Yeah...then Perry called.

Fortunately he was home this time and caught it early. Apparently, our sump pump went out this time. This is what a sump pump looks like when it bites the dust. Lovely, isn't it?!?

So, I detour through our local Home Depot to pick up a sump pump on the way home. Once Perry gets it installed, we start sucking the water out of the carpet. Ugh! Thankfully my dad came over to help. Thanks to all the rain, the pros who would normally come out are booked solid at present. Hopefully they'll make it out here tomorrow.

Here's the now working sump pump with the water drying. Once we got the new pump installed, the standing water in the very few bare concrete areas dried up pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there had been enough water and time for it to soak the carpet.

See...that new carpet steamer I recently purchased through by beloved QVC really came in handy! I can't tell you how many gallons of water we sucked up today. (We had several other wet/dry vacs in addition to this lovely model!)

The insurance adjuster told us that we could rent some air movers to help before the pros come. This sad looking thing was the only left in stock (we've had ALOT of rain so there are plenty of wet basements in our area right now.) This thing sounds like an airplane, though!

Ugh...the big worry is that the new carpet/pad will mildew. Apparently there are some products that the pros can put down to prevent that. I hope we've done enough to prevent future problems. I really hope we don't have to start ripping things out again. The adjuster said we might have to replace the pad, but the carpet is probably still good.

And...did you know that SUMP PUMP damage isn't normally covered on all policies?!? That adjuster did step back slightly when he saw my face after he made THAT comment. He quickly added that we HAD purchased the rider that does cover sump pump damage.

What a mess! That basement and I are not on good terms at the moment! :)