Soggy Saga

Yesterday's short little post turned into an all day affair. All night as well, which is why I'm writing this at 0300 hrs instead of sleeping, the sentiment about the birds long worn off.

An accumulated seven inches of snow disappeared overnight, helped along by a constant and often heavy rain. The seasonal creek that I've been mentioning lately was higher than I've ever seen it, as was the pond. Higher than the last lesson in hydrodynamics a couple weeks ago that required taking away a portion of the dam for the pond. Today we had another class.

Forgive me, but some picture must first be painted.

Our house is of a style one sees in varying sizes in the area, except for one feature: we have a basement. It's where I hole up most days, chained, if you will, to this computer and my drafting table. But I'm already getting ahead of myself...

There is a reason for few basements in this region. Because of the amount of rain we get, the ground is saturated to the basalt that lies not too far under the soil. The bedrock may also be why there are few basements, for it is hit digging no further down than nine feet anywhere on this ridge we live on. I have little doubt that my feet currently rest two feet above rock. The reason I think this is because the seasonal creek that runs 150 feet behind our house has a solid rock bottom, and the grade from our basement door to the creek drops at best and no more than that same two feet. Therefore, to accommodate a basement, after the walls of the foundation were built, soil was mounded about five feet high all around, but not before a fairly intricate drainage system was built for the gutters and such, plus another for the sump pumps. All of the exterior plumbing junctions near our back door where a six-inch pipe channels the water to the creek. The sump pump discharge runs alongside. These pipes don't have much of a grade, again, because of the proximity of the bedrock to the surface, yet function well enough during most rainy seasons.

Very close to where these pipes meet the creek, the stream goes into a 16-inch culvert that channels the flow along the side of our big barn, opening up again just past the structure, where the stream makes a sharp turn against a bit of a bank before heading into a neighbor's pasture. There was too much flow today for the culvert to handle and the water began to hang up behind the culvert and again at the bend, in effect making what is normally no more than a six-inch deep stream into a 18-inch reservoir of sorts. The added pressure and depth basically reversed the flow of the exterior drainage from the house. We had a back flow.

Now, you might wonder, where does this water go? Certainly not back up the gutter spouts. Part of the drain system runs just outside of the basement door. There is a 4" x 6" x 4' concrete trench with a grate over it to catch run-off as it comes from the driveway down the paving bricks to that door. This drain is plumbed into a drain just inside the basement, put there, I suppose, in case the washer decides to spring a leak.

You know where I'm going with this, so I'll take a moment to make a little detour.

I was on the phone with a clerical person from one of the recipients of my recent flurry of letter writing campaigns. This particular application procedure called for several files to be combined into rather sizable files that were then to be emailed as pdfs. Already a challenge for this Luddite, matters were further complicated by a glitch on the receiving end. I was pacing about while discussing the issue with this person when I wandered toward the room with basement door. The floor drain was a-bubbling, and I excused myself from the conversation.

I initially thought that the trench might be clogged, so I quickly converted my 14-gallon shop vac to wet mode, pulled up the grate and started in. Though thoroughly cleaned, the water kept filling and spilling over the trench. I'd need a pump. The local hardware store had one it would rent me. The wife set to taking things out of the new seasonal pond forming on the basement floor.

"How big is the trench you want to put this thing in?"

"Four inches wide."

"Won't fit."

"Shit. Any ideas?"

"We got some pond pumps up front for sale you could rig to a hose."

"Let's do it."

They had two sizes, one each: a 100 gallons per hour and one that displaced 300 gallons an hour. Given how quickly the water was coming in, I chose the larger of the two and headed home.

I had also called our neighbor friend before heading off the fetch a pump, for he recently retired from the water department in a nearby city. I thought he might have a pump, but no. He was at my house when I returned and we hooked up the pump in no time.

It was clearly insufficient. I needed another pump, but I already knew the hardware store couldn't help, so I called the pet store.

"We have 100, 300, 500, 950, 1500..."

"I'll be right there."

I chose the 950 gallon model, rigged it with some adapters our neighbor had, and within minutes the water level dropped in the trench and basement.

That was thirteen hours ago. The basement has been wet-vacced and is almost dry. I just have the 300 gallon pump going now and it seems to be matching the flow perfectly. I am now more concerned about the water level getting too low and the pump burning out, so here I am, still awake.

The weather site says we received three inches of rain yesterday. I do not know how to calculate the added snow melt beyond the 1 inch of rain equals one foot of snow formula. We have had five inches of rain in one day before and not experienced this flooding. The prognosticators are calling for another two inches today, one inch tomorrow, and significantly less after that.

The wife wakes up in a couple hours, and she'll take over the watch, but I'm thinking I'll see what happens if I turn off the pump... but not before I go have a look at the creek again.