So yesterday I went down to our basement to put some stuff away and discovered that a pipe going to an outside hydrant had burst. The pipe in question was way in the back of the basement, in the storage room. The first puddle I stepped in was at the very front of the basement, at the bottom of the stairs. Gallon after gallon of water had flooded down from the pipe in the ceiling, covering the storage room floor, seeping under the wall, running the entire length of the utility room, seeping under the next wall, and into Walker's man cave at the bottom of the stairs.
I was not happy.
Lucky for me, both Walker and my brother had just gotten home so I had help with the cleanup. Where do you even start with something like that? My brother ran the carpet steamer just to suck up the puddles he could get to, Walker did the same with the wet vac in another room, and I pulled boxes and totes off the shelves to check for damage.
There was a lot of damage.
By the time I had to leave for work we had all the standing water mopped up. The concrete was still damp but no actual puddles remained. I had carried box after dripping box up the stairs to the garage, where they will sit until the garbage goes out next week. I don't know, yet, how much was lost. It will take the whole weekend and then some to get everything cleaned up. The bad part is, since the water heater was leaking, I had shoved some things onto the shelves in the storage room to keep them from getting wet. They would have been safer left alone, as the water heater wasn't leaking all that much. Ah, well. Who knew?
The silver lining in all this is that I was meaning to clean up the basement this winter. Now I have no choice. We will be seriously purging some (read: most) of the "stuff" stored down there. It's been a long time coming and I'll be glad when it's done.
Oh no, that's a bummer. We've had floods at work. Make sure you have some fans running to dry things out. I think the first 24-48 hours you need to do that to prevent mold.
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