Here in New England we were hit with a rare spring nor’easter the other day. Everything was fine until the power went out causing our sump pump to stop working. For those of you who don’t have basements or flooding areas, a sump pump is a pump that sits in a hole in your basement. The hole is usually lined with a container. When the underground water rises, it pushes a float up which trips the switch when it gets to a certain height, and then flushes the water outside far away from the house. Unfortunately, when the electricity is out it doesn’t work. In the 10 minutes it took me to lug the generator outside and get it working, the water covered the floor. Luckily, it only covered the floor by about 1/8 inch, in fact there were some dry spots. My beautiful one-year-old Pergo floor is ruined and I lost almost all of my shipping boxes. Otherwise, I fared okay. It could have been much worse if I weren’t home.
Big lesson learned – buy a battery back up! My husband and I had no idea that they even existed. You would think that the company that waterproofed our basement and installed the sump pump last year would have mentioned that, or even tried to sell it to us. We had no idea! You can bet I’m going to Lowe’s this weekend to buy one. We’re also looking into flood insurance – just in case we have another mishap like this in the future.
All in all I feel very fortunate. The walls are unaffected and everything dried out very quickly. I’ll be back in business by tomorrow. For now, I’m working off of my kitchen table just like the old days!
