The downside of home ownership
I was going to title this, "The Wet Spot" but I know all about your dirty mind and decided not to go there. But look, I just went there anyhow. Oh well. Mind out of the gutter now, this is about the downstairs hallway thankyouverymuch. We'll get back to the gutter later in this story.
Sunday was my designated sleeping-in day. Andre and I have to trade off on the weekends because Fiona has no sleeping-in days scheduled in her little calendar and isn't quite ready to wander unsupervised through the house for several hours without a parent. Anyhow, Andre took Fiona downstairs to the family room to plug her into the electronic babysitter and stepped directly into a puddle in the middle of the hall. In our brand new carpet. Not just a little damp spot mind you, at least a gallon or so of water in a puddle. In our carpet. Nothing coming from the ceiling, nothing leaking from the washing maching, no obvious dampness in the walls near there. Just a puddle. The water must have bubbled up from under the house. Oh dear lord, what does that mean? Do we have to call the bulldozers to tear up the floor? This is not what you want to feel squishing between your toes at 6:45 am on a Sunday morning.
The immediate impulse in situations like this is still to call the landlord. Just like when the pipe broke under the sink, I want to just call someone else and have them deal with it. It's always hard to come to grips with the realization that WE are the landlords now and if the floor is crumbling away beneath us, WE are going to have to foot the bill. After much home repair related web browsing and apocryphal articles about foundation cracks and toxic mold, Andre decided to take a real world approach and look around outside to see if there was any obvious cause. And of course, as it always turns out in situations like this, it was something as stupid as a downspout which had come loose from the gutter. The water from the enormous rain storm we had that night went straight down the side of the house and must have found its way to the one nice little weak spot in the floor. We should have walked around the house when we first moved in to make sure all downspouts were affixed to their respective gutter thingies, but that's not something we thought to do. That's what the landlord is for, right?
We dried the carpet out as much as possible with the wet vac and then rented one of those high powered fans to blow on it all day. It seems dry now, but I'm a little worried about toxic mold that could kill us all as we're sleeping. The downspout is now attached to the gutter again and we weathered another night of rain without another puddle forming. Luckily, no bulldozers had to be called.
Sunday was my designated sleeping-in day. Andre and I have to trade off on the weekends because Fiona has no sleeping-in days scheduled in her little calendar and isn't quite ready to wander unsupervised through the house for several hours without a parent. Anyhow, Andre took Fiona downstairs to the family room to plug her into the electronic babysitter and stepped directly into a puddle in the middle of the hall. In our brand new carpet. Not just a little damp spot mind you, at least a gallon or so of water in a puddle. In our carpet. Nothing coming from the ceiling, nothing leaking from the washing maching, no obvious dampness in the walls near there. Just a puddle. The water must have bubbled up from under the house. Oh dear lord, what does that mean? Do we have to call the bulldozers to tear up the floor? This is not what you want to feel squishing between your toes at 6:45 am on a Sunday morning.
The immediate impulse in situations like this is still to call the landlord. Just like when the pipe broke under the sink, I want to just call someone else and have them deal with it. It's always hard to come to grips with the realization that WE are the landlords now and if the floor is crumbling away beneath us, WE are going to have to foot the bill. After much home repair related web browsing and apocryphal articles about foundation cracks and toxic mold, Andre decided to take a real world approach and look around outside to see if there was any obvious cause. And of course, as it always turns out in situations like this, it was something as stupid as a downspout which had come loose from the gutter. The water from the enormous rain storm we had that night went straight down the side of the house and must have found its way to the one nice little weak spot in the floor. We should have walked around the house when we first moved in to make sure all downspouts were affixed to their respective gutter thingies, but that's not something we thought to do. That's what the landlord is for, right?
We dried the carpet out as much as possible with the wet vac and then rented one of those high powered fans to blow on it all day. It seems dry now, but I'm a little worried about toxic mold that could kill us all as we're sleeping. The downspout is now attached to the gutter again and we weathered another night of rain without another puddle forming. Luckily, no bulldozers had to be called.
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