So it was pouring yesterday and I came home to the Prince of Stanley (PoS) and our ex-neighbor, Keaton, goofing it up with the Prince of Albacore (PoA) and the Duke of Ginger (DoG) also doing their own thing. I ate and then did some chillaxing. The DoG was going to go for a run with the Queen’s boss who is a bit of a fitness nut and he come upstairs after changing to go and said, “the PoS and Keaton spilled something in the hallway because there is a bit wet spot in the carpet.”

My heart skipped a beat.

This sounds like the last couple of times that our sump pump cratered on us and I noted some weird behavior over the weekend of the hose that runs from the pump discharge to the lawn. I ran downstairs to try and figure out if we were having an issue. Sure enough, we were.

I ran upstairs and got the PoS and Keaton and the PoA to go downstairs and start pulling everything out from the crawl space where the lid of the sump is located. I immediately hopped in my car and drove furiously to Lowe’s to buy a replacement pump.

Five minutes and $159 + tax later, I was out the door and back into my car. I made tracks back to the house and ran inside with the box on top of my shoulder, leaping three steps to get onto the back deck.

Moments later, I was in the basement attaching the spare hose I had to the pump before plunking the replacement pump into the sump. I put the discharge into floor drain in the laundry room and then plugged the pump in. It kicked on immediately and began pumping the groundwater into the floor drain. Where it might normally run for ten to fifteen seconds to empty the sump; the pump ran for a full ten MINUTES before turning off. It had to not only drain the sump but drain all of water that had built up in our weeping tile that surrounded the foundation of the house.

I then went to work sopping up the little bit of water that had gotten into the carpet. It was already getting late at this point and I didn’t have the tools at my disposal to fully deal with the problem. Plus, the Queen was out on a Ladies Night out for margaritas and catch Magic Mike.

Anyway, I got a call today at lunch that the basement was flooded! Luckily, the gas man was showing up at the exact same time as when the Queen discovered it and he noted that the discharge of the hose was too far into the floor drain and was now submerged due to the rise in water level in the drain. The pump couldn’t overcome the pressure head created by the water level above the discharge so the sump simply backed up and overflowed.

Anyway, I left work immediately. When I got home, I saw how bad it was. The water got into every room. It didn’t really go up higher than the top of the carpet but when you walked, you could see the water squish up. I helped to get the remaining movable items upstairs into the living room and the Queen sped off to the grocery store to rent a steam cleaner. From 12:30 until 4:30, we furiously moved furniture around and pulled up countless gallons of water out of the carpet. Seriously, I have no idea how many gallons are in the container of that Rug Doctor machine and I have even less of an idea of how many times I had to pour it into the toilet into the basement. At least 20.

We took a break for dinner (the Queen’s mom and dad invited us over for dinner) and after dinner, we got back after it. We stopped at around 9:00 because I was physically exhausted and I think the amount of moisture left in the carpet would be comparable to how much would be left if you actually steam cleaned the carpet.

We will have another go at it tomorrow, if necessary, but I think we will largely be waiting for the carpet to finally dry and we can go back to putting the basement back together again and getting the shit that is piled up in our living room, back downstairs where it belongs.

So that has been the last 30 hours. Fun.