Saturday, May 29, 2010

Transformations #12


For the last few days, we've had torrential downpours in Winnipeg.  This morning I came downstairs to find that our basement sewer drain had backed up onto our bare concrete floor a little bit.  Fortunately, it began to recede almost immediately.  More seriously though, we have water coming in from all four corners of the basement.


LEFT: AN EXASPERATED DAD LOOKS AT THE WATER TRICKLING TOWARDS THE DRAIN IN HIS BASEMENT

Last summer we did a lot of external landscaping to slope our lawn away from the house, as well as rerouting some downspouts, and it seemed to make a dramatic difference.  But this, well, this is crazy.

I'm trying to regain hope by telling myself that every house in Winnipeg is having these issues, and that the planning we've got for finishing our basement isn't shot, as this is likely a once-in-a-lifetime storm.

Anyway, the transformation I did today was getting out the ladder and cleaning our eaves-troughs.  I could only get to the lower ones on our front porch, as our house is a 2 ½ story monster and while my ladder technically reaches the top roof, it's mighty wobbly up there.  I did make the climb, but once I neared the top I figured that some jobs are best left to professionals.

Nevertheless, I do count this as progress.
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1 comment:

  1. I feel your pain, though my problems this week has been having to get my carcass out of bed in the middle of the night to shut the windows - the wind would blow that very heavy rain indoors and make rather large puddles on my window sill.

    I used to live in an attic apartment in an old house next to Holy Rosary in Osborne Village (since torn down for condos) and because of the flat roof ceiling leaks were a pretty common occurrence. When there seemed to be more leaks than containers to catch the drips, that was when I decided to find something better.

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