I had a new hot water heater installed this morning...and put on bricks to keep it dry.
A plumber also came, put a bucket under the leaky pipe, and said he'd be back tomorrow to fix it. He said he would give me the name of a contractor who installs sump pumps, but he also said I might be over-reacting to a situation that is unlikely to recur. Many people around here who never had water in their basements have it now.
He disconnected the small pump that I had running and said it was not doing anything because the floor was dry; still, as Dave said, the water keeps coming up from the floor, and by the time the gas company finally came tonight around 9, the water had risen about an inch again. The technician plugged the pump in, got a bunch of water out, and said I would have to monitor it because it's not the kind that turns on and off automatically.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do about going down there periodically to turn it on and off, because I shouldn't be near fungus and mold. Meryl is going to plug it in in the morning, but I don't know about the rest of the day. Even if it is expensive, I might see about getting the permanent pump installed, that is, if they can do it on short notice and with some water still on the floor.
The forecast is for more rain and snow tomorrow. Ugh.
Last night I kept Maddie with me in the kitchen with the door closed. The system heating the kitchen and my bedroom was working, albeit not very well, but it was better than the rest of the cold house.
She looked kind of forlorn lying on her bed with no option to go into the den and get on the couch, where she usually sits next to me. I imagined this thought bubble: "Why is she keeping me in here when I really belong on the couch on my afghan?"
After a while she gave up and put herself to bed in her crate before her normal bedtime.
Odd story in an odd day spent mostly juggling phones and calling contractors: Comcast was supposed to call before they came to fix my dead landline. Instead, they just showed up. The guy went downstairs, fiddled with some wires and pronounced the phone fixed.
Ah, dial tone! Ah, heat!
Later, I listened to the messages that had backlogged in the phone. One was from Comcast, confirming the appointment to fix the phone. So they called the broken phone that they knew I could not answer to tell me that they were coming to fix it.
Very curious, to say the least.
4 comments:
Stay high and dry! We have a sump pump in the Catskills, but it's also not automatic. I never go down there because it's scary. I didn't even think about fungus.
Dearest Runderful Ronni,
did you know that Margeret Hamilton, the wicked witch, lived in my building on 50th Street? She was actually rather shy..."melting..."
anyway, keep to high ground, and do not, please, go down to the basement!
let it be dry, dried, with you and Maddie safe...
we do not need an Ark...
Happy to hear that you have heat and are staying dry. Maybe a neighbor could check on the pump for you?
I was told Margaret Hamilton lived on Fifth Avenue near my parents' apartment and that she entertained groups of school children to show them she was just a normal person. Maybe she lived in both neighborhoods.
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