Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 4

Well, last we left off C and I had just emptied the basement.

Once the basement was empty, C cleaned the basement first with Lysol and then after it all dried (a few days later) he used bleach.  It was the only thing we could do in order to try to get rid of some of the smell.

It was still pretty cold in the house because the circuit board was fried on the furnace.  It took a few days to get the new board in stock.  But, it wasn't too bad.  The next few days were warmer and sunny.

My mom came over one day and helped us clean the things we were going to keep.  Although I have to say this whole experience taught me that the chemicals you can buy at the store are worthless.  Seriously, read the fine print.  Bleach may kill 99.9% of bacteria, but there is always a little asterix next to the statement.  It doesn't kill ALL bacteria, only a certain strain.  And NOTHING you can find at Walgreens or jewel can kill mold.  I guess that's why the pro's cost so much money...

The quote the pros gave us over the phone was 2,000-2,500 for the square footage of the basement.  When they got to the house they estimated it being closer to 3 or 4k.  But that's OK, I had a feeling the original price was low.  We showed them the basement, and asked if they could keep the wood paneling.  They said no.  It had to go.  So they basically just took a circular saw and cut the entire basement wood paneling off.  Thus making our "partially finished basement, no longer anywhere close to being finished.

I think one of the scariest parts was after the techs took off all the wood paneling they already found mold growing.  It was nothing serious, only a patch of mold about 3 inches in diameter.  They were able to get rid of it with special antimicrobial spray stuff.  I was shocked.  It had been less than a week.  But I guess that's what happens when you get water.  The told us not to worry, concrete is porous and would absorb the spray solution stuff.  As long as the basement dried properly, we wouldn't have to worry.

It took over a week for the basement to dry.  Unfortunately, that also increased the cost.  It ended up costing $6,000 to properly clean and dry the basement.

Of course none of that includes any of the amount of damage to the walls any of the furniture or other possessions we lost.

And... insurance didn't cover any of it.  Insurance doesn't cover "acts of God." Although I should call it an "act of stupidity."  Apparently some moron didn't open the deep tunnel in Chicago and that was the main cause of the problem.  Anyway, I called the insurance company and said there was water in the basement, we don't know how it got in.  It could have been coming in through the window wells, or up through the sinks, or the sump pump, we have no idea.  They said they don't cover water coming in through the window wells, and we don't have flood insurance which would cover it coming up through the sinks.  And we don't have sump pump failure insurance which would cover if the sump pump failed.

Let me just say, Lesson Learned.  Now we have sump pump failure insurance (a few hundred a year), flood insurance ($1,000 ish a year), and major appliance failure insurance ($20 a year).  Major appliance failure insurance is if your water heater or washer burst and flooded your entire basement.  Basically, I never want to deal with this ever again.  It was hell.

Just an FYI - Insurance only covers permanent possessions.  Walls, carpet, washer/dryer, furnace.  So that real expensive surround system you have in your basement?  You'll get nothing for that.  Not even $10.

It is now almost a year later (10ish months) and we are JUST starting to redo the basement.  More on that later.

The damage -

Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 3

Well, we left off here - http://dizzyingthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/10/misery-loves-company-home-ownership_11.html

We came home and saw the damage.  The house was freezing, and basically it was gloomy.

We woke up the next morning "ready" to start digging through everything, but we weren't ready emotionally.

I had made several phone calls to flood cleaner people.  They couldn't come for at least 3 days, possibly more.  So off we went to taking as much crap as possible out to the garbage.  Most of the things were easy-ish to take to the trash.  Chairs, sofas, papers, all had to be taken out to the trash.  But there were certain things we had to think about.  What about a sleeping bag?  That can be washed... but do you really want to sleep in a poop bag?  Nope... so off it went to the garbage.

There were other issues with certain things that were not electronic or fabric that didn't need to be thrown out.  Those were just placed in a "to clean" pile.

Then there was the issue of actually taking the sofa outside... first of all, the sofa was 100% waterlogged.  It was heavy as all could be, and it was just C and I emptying the basement.  So, off we go, to the top of the stairs to get the sofa out of the basement.  It was the most difficult thing I think I have ever done, and it was exasperated by the fact that it wouldn't fit through the door.  Since we moved in we changed the door to the side yard and neither of us realized that the door was slightly smaller.  By an inch or so.  And unfortunately that inch meant the leather waterlogged sofa wouldn't fit through the door.  So after I had spent a TON of energy pushing the couch up the stairs, and C had spent a TON of energy PULLING the couch up the stairs he told me. "It doesn't fit."  Honestly, I wanted to cry.  How can this stupid heavy as h*ll couch NOT fit through the door!!

It was the worst words to hear.  So we take the couch back the basement and C starts waking it with a crowbar and saw and hammer and whatnot taking it apart.  I mean at this point, its not like it needs to stay in one piece.  I think C got a lot of aggression out this way. He dismantled 2 full size sofas, 1 loveseat, and 2 chairs.

We had to throw out a lot of emotional things...
Up until this day I had every single ribbon I had ever won while horseback riding.  I had every 1st, every last, and everything in between.  But when they are covered in poop water, its not something I want to keep anymore.... I threw out the first ribbon I ever won with my first horse.  Several first place ribbons.  Several national titled ribbons...

My horses halter was saturated.  The last halter he wore when we had to put him down.  That was rough.


C's uncle was in the military and back in the day his cousin and uncle would send him letters, snail mail.  Before this flood he kept every single letter they sent him.  Those all had to be thrown out.  You couldn't even read them anymore.  He also had a few external hard drives that had photos on them.  Those were waterlogged and had to be thrown out as well.

Those were the hardest things to throw out.  The memories.  I mean the furniture sucks... we had perfectly usable mini-fridges, enough couches and chairs to sit everyone comfortably, but the memories.... Sucks... To this day, almost a year later, it still brings me to tears.

Anyway, these are the photos.  I only managed to take photos of the 1st garbage trip.  We had just as much garbage the 2nd day of cleaning.

Its cold, and I'll cry if I want to

Honestly, it annoys me when people say "Everyone needs to stop complaining about the cold,  People in (insert cold place here) deal with this all the time! And they don't have heat." Blah Blah Blah, Guess what, I don't live in that god forsaken cold place.  I live in a suburb right outside of Chicago. Weather.com says the average High for January should be 31, with the average low at 16.  December should be 35 and 21 respectively.  I want to be in a place where the average temperature falls between high teens and freezing.  Not the insane weather we have gotten.


Weather.com also says the average precipitation should be 1.73 total inches in the month of January and 2.25 for December.  (By the way, 10 inches of snow = 1 inch of precipitation.)


Do you want to know what January was like??? The average HIGH temperature has been 24 degrees, but the average LOW temperature is 6 degrees.  That's a huge difference.  Its been, on average, 10 degrees colder this year. While I don't know what data they use for average, I'm sure its more than the past 30 years.  And lets be honest, the past few years have been warm.   AND, none of this includes windchill.  I don't know what the windchill averages has been, but it has been a crazy windy month.


Guess what else, we broke 2 records this year for coldest temperature and tied another, 1 record was set in 1988, another in 1977, and the record we tied??? 1955.  Do you see what I'm trying to say?  It's been CRAZY cold.  So cold that we have broken/tied records that have been set for 59 years!


Lets compare precipitation now... We have had 4.88 inches of precipitation in the month of January.  That's almost 3 times the AVERAGE.  And guess what, there's a 60% chance it'll snow tomorrow. God only knows what that's going to be like. Oh and December?? also much higher than the average...


So lets go back to comparing warm places with cold places... On January 10th (this year) got 8.5 inches of snow... that was a lot.  And yesterday, Atlanta got 3 inches of snow, which is a lot for them.  Atlanta had 1200 accidents because of that snow, and you don't see people saying it was "no big deal."  Because guess what, while 3 inches of snow may not be a big deal for Chicago (it happened 5 times this month alone), its a HUGE deal for Atlanta.


I choose to live in Chicago, so when we have a 60 degree swing in temperatures of the span of 3 days, Its not a shock... That's what Chicago is like.  But I don't live in the North Woods, or Russia, or Alaska or any other cold place, I live in Chicago.  And you know what?  I'll cry about the snow if I want to.

Misery Loves company - Home ownership part 2

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.

TBC.

Misery Loves company - Home ownership

The flood of 2013.

I don't really know where to start.  The fiance and I were in Pittsburgh for work.  We had a security system and a flood prevention system.  We should have been golden.

It was April of 2013, Everyone in Chicago knew a gigantic storm was heading their way.  And everyone knew when it arrived.  4 AM Eastern time, I got a phone call from the security company.  The water detection system detected water.  That meant there was water in the basement.  I tried to go back to bed as I was in Pittsburgh, I had to show up to work, and there was absolutely nothing I could do.  I kept trying to tell myself, hopefully there was only a small amount of water, maybe the water was coming in from the window wells or something.

At 6 AM Eastern I called my dad.  I knew it was rude to wake him up, but I was getting worried about the house.  The village we live in had been sending us updates on the storm.  The storm sewers were full hours ago and there was "nothing the village could do."  Turns out, my father was awake dealing with his own issues.  Everyone I knew either had their own flooding issues, or they didn't have keys to the house.

Seeing as we had the locks changed after we moved into the house we never fully exchanged everyone's house keys.  My future in-laws didn't have keys, neither did any of our friends.  (this has since changed, Lesson Learned #1)

So I waited anxiously for my parents to be able to get to our house and tell us the damage.  Unfortunately, a few hours into the day my dad calls me to tell me his water problem is under "control" but they can't get out of the house.  I get these pictures from my mom to show what he means.


The black car is parked in the street my parents garage sits on.

 If you look closely, you can sort of see a firehydrant almost entirely under water.

My parents garage.  Obviously, no way they can drive in the street.  They may be able to get a car out of the garage, but then where?

If you look closely you can see a red car with the trunk open and the water almost all the way up to the trunk.  Basically, it wasn't safe to drive.

So unfortunately, we had to wait longer. By this time the storm had died down, so hopefully it was only a matter of time before we got news about the house.

At noon, I told my boss in Pittsburgh that I had to drive back to Chicago.  Our house was flooded and I don't know how long I'll be gone or how serious the flood is.  I suspected I'd be back by Monday as "I'm sure its not that bad."

And so my fiance and I made the 7 hour drive back to Chicago.  We hit Chicago around 5 PM.  It was then that I really got scared.  There was no traffic, literally no traffic. While driving from Indiana through Chicago to the North side of the city we didn't see a single break light.  Oh jeeze I thought.  This is not good news.  Also around 5:00 my parents made it to our house.  They said there was "muck" everywhere on the floor so we definitely got water, but it "didn't look bad."  They commented on how the basement kinda looked like we just threw everything there when we left.  I was confused, I knew we had a few "storage" areas, but I thought I left everything stacked in an organized fashion.

We finally got home around 6 or 7 PM.  The house was freezing, but that didn't matter we had the heat down low while we were out of town.  We immediately went to the basement to see the damage and turned up the heat.  We put on our work boots and decided to see how bad it was.

The facts:
We had wood paneling in the basement. Not my favorite thing in the world but not terrible, it was good quality.  There were water marks 15-20 inches up on the wood.  However, wood is not a reliable measuring tool when dealing with water.  There was a metal filing cabinet that had a water mark 11.5 inches high.  My fiance makes meade using wine bottles.  We store the empty wine bottles on their sides in the basement.  3 of the "levels" of wine bottles were filled with "water." The 4th was not.  The 4th bottle opening was at 13 inches off the ground.  The 3rd was at 10.5 inches off the ground.  So, we got water, we got a lot of water.  Somewhere around 11.5 inches.

We went into the basement powder room and saw "muck" in the sink as well as toilet.  "huh, so the water came out of the sink..... that means .... this... is .... sewage." Beautiful.  We went to the wet bar, there were standpipes in the wet bar sink.  The wet bar sink was full of water because the standpipes made it so it couldn't drain fully.  Definitely sewage.  There is no way anything could come out of the sink except through the drain.  Sewage.... Poop water.  We were walking in poop water.  We are breathing poop water.  omg. But why didn't the backflow preventer work?

TBC....

Dublin barks a lot during storms

Dublin is a fantastic watch dog... almost too good of a watch dog.  Last night was very windy and stormy.  C was out with friends so I was home alone.  It got to be "bed time" (haha, yes I go to bed at the same time every day) and I went to bed with Dublin.  The only problem was Dublin kept hearing the wind blowing and kept barking.  I was too afraid to turn the lights off for fear of Dublin actually barking at a burgler and not just the storm.  So, I sat in bed (with the lights on) until C got home.

During that time, Dublin barked every 5 minutes.  Sometimes Dublin would just bark once and then put his head back down.  Other times he would bark excessively and get up and run to the front door.  I could hear him walking around, barking every few minutes, checking to make sure no one was there, and then run back to bed with me. 

After doing this 2 times, I was starting to get nervous and was 1 more time away from getting up and grabbing the bat and setting it right beside me.  See, when I moved to the city, my mom gave me her metal baseball bat to use as a weapon if a burglar ever came to the house.  (I'm pretty sure this bat has lived under my parents bed for the past 20 years.)  I actually started looking around the room, if a burglar did find me, to see what I would throw at him to try to get away. 


Thankfully, after 30 minutes or so, C arrived home and saved me from the scary burglar to come.  (phew)