Last I left off, C and I had just realized that our basement flooded with poop water.
It's after that we ask each other why the furnace hasn't kicked on. I go upstairs to make sure I turned on the heat. Maybe I didn't flip the switch or something. So I take off my boots, before walking up the beautiful wood stairs we installed and hadn't had time to sand and stain. Strange, the thermostat is turned on. So I go back to the basement and C and I try to figure out what's wrong figuring the pilot light went out. We take the panel off the furnace and see corrosion on
the circuit board. Awesome. Our "newish" furnace is broken. What about the water heater? We turn on the laundry sink and see if the water heater kicks on. It doesn't.
I can barely keep myself from crying. Our basement is flooded, its 40 degrees in the house. We have no hot water, no heat and no money to replace any of these major appliances. Luckily our neighbor owns an HVAC company so I go over and knock on the door. I say "I know its late, but we were out of town when the flood happened we got a lot of water in the basement and now our furnace and water heater wont work and its really cold in the house. Can you please look at it?" He tells me he'll be over in 20 min after he puts his daughters to bed. I'm relieved! Our neighbor comes over and looks at the furnace. Circuit board is fried, it'll be about $600 if that's the only problem it'll be a few days until he can get the part and its working. So that means we will be using the fireplace a lot to keep the house warm. Unfortunately, all the water shortened the life cycle of our furnace by a lot. Then we ask him about the water heater. We can't get the pilot to light but after about 20 minutes he gets the pilot to light. Woohooo! Hot shower here we come!
Our neighbor asks us how we got so much water. We explain that we have no idea, but it came up through the drains so it must be sewage. He asks what that manhole cover is in the front of our house, and I explained that its an electronic backflow preventer. Not the best flood prevention system in the world since it relies on electricity, but since we didn't loose power we have no idea why it malfunctioned. We go out in the misty rain and open the manhole cover. Everything looks ok, but our neighbor decides to jump down and see what happened. He jiggles the lever and all of a sudden we see the lift gate close.
To this day we have no idea why the lift gate was stuck open. And the only thing I can say is in the future, every spring, we are going to have the flood protection serviced. We had inspected the lift gate prior to purchasing the house, and there was supposedly nothing wrong with it, but what can be done? Lesson Learned #2 - inspect/service flood protection every year.
Our neighbor says to call the insurance company because we should be able to get some money to cover the cost. So after he leaves I call the insurance agent and get a voicemail. Not surprising as its 9 PM.
We light a fire, pull out the blankets and wait until morning to start digging into the damage.
So, below are pictures of the damage. Mind you, this is more than 24 hours after the flood started.
I promise we did NOT leave our basement this much of a disaster. Everything was neatly stacked.
Notice the leather couches have water marks and are puckering.
Now, granted our floors weren't spotless, but they didn't look like this when we left. If you look at the wall on the right, there is a water line about 20 inches high.
I took a picture of the house outside... it looked so "normal." Also notice its snowing out... that's how cold it was.
This is the file cabinet I was talking about. See the water line?
This is the wet bar I was talking about. Water came up through the drains.
More water marks.
The powder room. See the floor, with the muck... Yeah. Nasty.
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