Gratuitous Basement Flood of Oct. '18 Update Post

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike)
11/17/2018 at 19:03 • Filed to: None

Well......there’s nothing really to update. The floors have all been taken up and the walls trimmed. No more work can be done until we empty the first room of EVERYTHING (including stuff from a lot of the other rooms) back into a different room so a floor could be put down.

We’re not sure what floor we’re getting but pre-flood it was subfloor with tile in the hallway/hallway closets and the rec room was legit oak hardwood with a subfloor. The storage/furnace room and unfinished bathroom (functioning toilet, but no finished walls and only a plywood subfloor - we used it as a second storage room anyway) we’re not going to bother getting floors back in as the storage room never had any before in the first place and as we store things in the bathroom, we don’t care about a floor in there until we someday decide to finish the bathroom (it was unfinished when we moved into this house).

We’re thinking we may just get the cement leveled and have tile put down everywhere as we’re hoping that would be the cheapest and easiest (and most future flood proof if any of this happens again, but we haven’t decided.

My brother’s desktop PC works fine, but his video card has been shorted in the flood...new video card now and everything else seems fine so he has his PC set back up temporarily in his bedroom rather than the rec room (and he also still has his laptop) and all is well. I hadn’t even tried turning my desktop PC on since the flood, but I am typing from it right now (temporarily testing it on the kitchen floor...lol) and all seems fine with it so far! :)

That’s pretty much it at the moment....I bought a new less-easily-clogged drain cover for the outside drain near the basement door in case that was the problem. Nobody seems to be able to figure out what happened exactly and where the water came from, so I might’ve done it for no reason, but at this point, I think $12 for ‘just in case’ is a good enough reason in case it ever happens again...

DISCUSSION (11)

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 19:13

Let me know if you need insurance help

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 19:40

Do you actively want to use the space for living? Why bother with flooring at all, if it’s just for storage? Perhaps price out a French drain / sump pit, slope the concrete to the drain, and just store stuff up on pallets if that doesn’t fix it.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
11/17/2018 at 20:05

Insurance is going to cover it, we already know, but we’re worried it’s being caused by the HUGE amount of excavation and landscaping our neighbours did during the summer as this was the first time it’s ever flooded in the 16 or so years we’ve lived here. If that’s the case, do we have any recourse?

The other issue is that the amount we’re getting back (apparently we didn’t have as much coverage as maybe we should have...22K or so?) will probably be only really enough to fix the house, not not necessarily replace some of the stuff we lost / take a few extra measures to try and make sure it never happens again...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind
11/17/2018 at 20:08

The no-flooring thing will be happening in the storage room and unfinished bathroom as the storage room/furnace room never had any anyway, just bare cement, and the bathroom we use as a storage room as it’s not finished at all. The hallway and it’s closets and the rec room were definitely living spaces. House already has a French Drain around it.

We’re going to get a trench dug around the drain that is just outside the basement door and fill it with crushed rock and run it over to the French Drain...that way there would have to be a shit-ton of water there to full up that whole trench AND the drain would still be there as a backup...hoping that would work...but the money insurance is giving us won’t be enough to cover the house repairs, let alone the trench and replacement of some of the stuff we lost...

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 20:12

shit man. Are they penalizing you for the low limits? This is called co-insurance . You can always sue your neighbour. I would speak to a lawyer if you need.

If your limits are too low, speak to your broker. There maybe nothing that can be done in this case short of suing your neighbour and their trades/architects/whatever

punkgoose17 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 20:15

Subfloor and laminate might be easy.

As a child we had a large area rug on the cement. We flooded the basement once draining the above ground pool. We just lifted the carpet dried it, cleaned the floor, then when always dry laid the carpet back down.

punkgoose17 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 20:17

Glad to here your computers are working.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > punkgoose17
11/17/2018 at 20:23

Thanks! We didn’t really lose any ‘stuff’ that was terrible valuable, but a replacement similar-spec video card for my brother’s high-tier PC was $321 CAD. :/

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > punkgoose17
11/17/2018 at 20:25

That’s why we’re thinking of going with ceramic tile. It’s supposedly pretty water resistant and would be nicer than just concrete. The bare concrete that is there now is pretty uneven and poorly done. I mean...it functions OK, but it looks terrible. We thought about getting a polished concrete floor put in, but we were told not to as the moisture content in concrete is so high that when it would be drying it would risk causing even more mould everywhere in the house from the high humidity that it could be worse than the flood itself.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
11/17/2018 at 20:29

We’re calling in a fellow we had do landscaping for us awhile back to ask him his opinion on whether the work that was done next door would’ve cause a lot more water on our land. They took out a LOT of dirt, as in like...removed 10s of meters back and up (it was a bank they were removing) behind their property that was mostly clay dirt, removing all the trees that were on it, plus the bank means a lot less would be there to absorb the water. They put a French drain in on their property too, on the right side (looking down the driveway)...which is the same side our French Drain is on (the left side looking down OUR driveway). Their property is slightly back, slightly higher up, and to the left of ours...not sure how to prove their work is at least partially at fault...

I was out last night in a rain/snowstorm (snow then changed to ice pellets and then after that predominantly rain that washed everything away) last night checking on things and there was a LOT more water flowing down our French Drain than I ever remember seeing in the past, even in heavy storms/hurricanes and the like...

BrianGriffin thinks “reliable” is just a state of mind > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
11/17/2018 at 21:09

In that case, I agree that cheap flooring might be the best course of action. Honestly if it’s a place that isn’t normally wet (like the flood was a once in a decade thing), i’d say cheap carpet is cheaper and better than cheap vinyl.