Wet feet

The rain that has beset us for some weeks now is set to depart.  According to the National Weather Service we can expect the sun to appear in a couple of days time.  To which I say: what is this "sun" they speak of?  It's not quite as bad as that but there have been a lot of grey days in the past few weeks, very little sun and an awful lot of rain.

Last Wednesday the rain was particularly awful as it started seeping into our basement.  Fortunately I just happened to go down there as it started so I was able to reduce its impact.  Nothing was really at risk, except an old bed which was quickly moved out of harm's way.  But there were a lot of cardboard boxes down there that I have been slowly cutting up and disposing of.

Of course I'm not used to having a basement, but they are ubiquitous here.  Not every American home has a basement (in some places the water table is too high to make them practical, for one thing) but they are extremely widespread.  I can tell you now that they are a double-edged sword.  On the one hand it's like having a whole extra level to the house, and somewhere to hide all those annoying utilitarian machines - which in the case of a typical American home means at least the washing machine and dryer, the hot water cylinder and the central heating and air conditioning.  We have all of these in our basement, plus enough space to have a little room down there, finished and carpeted which we use to hold the spillover when we have guests to stay.

The bad part is that you have a big empty underground chamber beneath the house that's only too happy to fill with water if the conditions are right.  To counteract this they have drainage built in and are sealed to prevent even damp getting in.  They are impervious to water, or at least they are supposed to be.  But if you have a little hole, and erosion of the soil around the foundation, all it takes is a good strong rainstorm for the water to start pouring in.  And that's what happened to us last week.

It's not normally a problem but the ground is already so wet (we could grow rice in the back yard at the moment) and there was such a cloudburst, that the water had nowhere to go.

So I spent the rest of last week cutting up boxes and bagging them ready for disposal.  Now I just have to mop the floor with bleach and we'll be just about back to normal.  Apart from that nagging feeling whenever the rain comes that the basement might be filling with water, spurring yet another visit downstairs to ease my mind.  I'm looking forward to some sunny weather.