… I don’t go half way.

With the issues we’ve been having, we’ve made a point of using the biological drain maintenance stuff regularly. Mostly, it’s through the toilet or the bath tub. The kitchen sink isn’t done as often, since that section of the main drain got augered last year. More rarely, we do the drain for the washing machine. That one is more because of how the drain and taps are protected by a 2×4 box with a shelf above. Putting anything down that drain requires the use of long, flexible funnel.

With plans to do laundry today, I remembered to pour some of the drain maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain last night.

This morning, after making my trip to the post office, I started a load of laundry, then started working other stuff while my daughter started doing the litters. Since we use stove pellets as litter, it goes into buckets that gets dumped into its own compost pile behind the outhouse.

I heard my daughter head to the main entry to put the first full bucket outside, which got interrupted by an alarmed exclamation.

The entry way was flooded!

This is what happened when the main line was blocked before. It could handle the slow drain of a kitchen sink, but not the fast drain of a washing machine, so the water backed up the drain and all over the floor. This time, though, there was way more water than before! How could the drain have blocked so badly??

While my daughter went for the mop, I sloshed my way to the basement, where I could get the extra sump pump hose. Water was pouring down the stairs, and there were huge puddles all over the concrete floor.

I found the hose, though. This is what we used before, attaching the drain from the washing machine to the hose, and running it out the window on the storm door, which is missing its screen.

As I was preparing to set that up, pausing the washing machine, I suddenly realized…

There was no hose in the drain pipe.

When I took it out to pour the maintenance stuff into the drain, I forgot to put the hose back. At some point a cat must have knocked it behind the machine.

The load was about 3/4 done, which means there was at least two drain cycles that had gone completely onto the floor behind the washing machine.

I pulled the hose up from behind the washing machine and put it in the drain pipe.

*sigh*

So my daughter and I have just spent the last couple of hours mopping up the mess, filling mop buckets repeatedly. We got the bulk of it out of the entry way, then I left her to that and started on the basement. My daughter did set the hose up to drain out the window, though, before restarting the laundry, just in case.

As for the basement…

Well, it sure does show us how uneven the floor is down there!

The root cellar is directly under the entryway, and a lot of the water flowed into there. From there, it flowed to one side of the middle of the basement.

The side where there are counter shelves on the floor, of course.

Since we don’t let the cats down there anymore, I’d moved the screen barrier between the new and old basements. After much mopping and several runs up the stairs to empty the mop bucket outside, I went to turn on the light switch near the opening between the two basements, and discovered water had flowed along the wall and into the old basement, too!!

That basement doesn’t have weeping tile, so it’s set up for wet. There wasn’t enough to bother doing any clean up there.

Once I got to the point where it wasn’t practical to keep mopping up the water, and there was no way we could get to the water pooled along the wall, it was time to set up fans. We have the blower fan that’s used to keep the old basement floor dry – not a problem this year, since it’s too dry – as well as a couple of pedestal fans. Those are now set up where the floor is still dry, aimed at the wet areas. I also brought down a box fan and set it up so it could blow towards the new basement stairs – they have carpet nailed to them, so we really need to get that dry! We have extension cords set up all over the place, all hanging from the ceiling, but I wasn’t willing to plug in the box fan yet, since I would have to stand in a puddle of water to do it! I’d like to find another fan and set it up, facing the root cellar, too.

I also got the Styrofoam insulation out of the basement windows to open them up and allow more air circulation. Only one still has a screen, though. I opened the south facing one, just a crack, but the second east facing one not only doesn’t have a screen, but the plastic part on the glass that is pulled on to slide the window open is basically disintegrated. Since I wasn’t about to move out the shelf that’s under the window to fight with it, I left it be.

With the nights still chilly, we haven’t switched the old basement winter window to its summer screen window, but I might just have to do that early!

What. A. Mess.

Meanwhile, the package my husband was expecting wasn’t among the 4 I brought home – one of which was for my daughter. We finished in time for me to change out of my wet clothes and start another load of laundry, before heading back to the post office to see if the postmaster had processed it, yet.

I’m happy to say that at least that went well. His package was there – along with three others that came in early!

So for the next while, we’re going to have to keep checking on the basement and the fans. I’m not happy using that old blower fan. I imagine it’s something that was acquired through salvage somewhere. The cord to plug it in is clearly not original, and it starting to look old and worn to me. So does the motor itself, to be honest. Costco has industrial blowers at a really good price. They are also plastic, not metal. Since we’re using them for wet floors, I’d much rather not be using a metal fan! We might have to invest in a couple.

We’ll have to set up a fan in the entry way. My daughter was able to mop up quite a bit, but not move the washer and dryer out. There just isn’t much space in the entry.

All because I forgot to put a hose back into the drain pipe.

What a mess I made!!

The Re-Farmer