Fire & Water

Tuesday night Michael went up on the roof and got the swamp cooler ready to go. He came down after putting in the pump & changing the pads and we turned it on. After the initial dust cloud that came out of the vent (honestly, I detest swamp coolers) it was sounding fine and then "Clonk!" and it started smelling like something was burning. We quickly shut it off and ran outside to look at the roof and make sure it wasn't on fire. By then it was too dark to get on the roof again and see what had happened.

Last night Michael found out that the motor had burned up and it really was smoking when it was turned on. Luckily someone had given us a new motor a year or so ago and we still had it in the garage. Half an hour on the roof and Michael has the swamp cooler running much better than it ever has in the three and a half years we've lived here. YAY!

THEN, it was about 10:30 and I went downstairs to do the orders that are pending on my website (AngelHeadbands.com) and I sat down at the computer to print them off. I wondered why it smelled funny down there and after about 30 seconds of wondering I got up and looked around the corner of the computer desk. WET. Squishy, gross, flooded, wet. The WHOLE basement. I yelled upstairs to Michael and he came down and figured out that it was our washing machine that for some reason was putting out gallons of water all over the floor. We got that turned off and then started carrying things out of the basement.

LUCKILY we didn't have much sitting directly on the floor- actually besides the bottoms of boxes (we run 3 businesses out of our house, two of which are housed in the basement, the other one in the garage) we just had a box of photos waiting to be scrapbooked that really got wet. I laid out all the pictures and they are all dry now, not much harm done thank goodness. BUT, there was about 2 inches of water slowly creeping toward the far wall and couch and we had to pull the carpet back so all the furniture had to go.

We called our homeowners insurance to see what they could do for us, and after 15 minutes on the phone I was told that their system was down and they couldn't do anything for us until it came back up. Grr.

Michael and I took out all the furniture and moved everything to higher ground. Then we got out the shop vac and slurped as much water as we could from the carpet, then pulled it back and saw that the pad was practically disintigrating underneath it was so sopping wet. So we pulled that all out, shoved it in garbage bags and put it in the garage (insurance assessors have to see everything or it would be in the garbage today) . We vacuumed up as much water as possible and called the insurance again. For some reason we have no deductible on our homeowners insurance. Would have been nice to know 4 hours earlier when we started cleaning up all the water that we could have called someone and it wouldn't have cost us anything. Whatever.

An insurance claims adjuster is going to come out in the next day or two and look at the damage. We're thinking that some of the sheetrock and baseboards need to be replaced because the water seeped through from the laundry into the bathroom, and the furnace room into the bathroom behind the tile. The bathroom vanity cabinet is all swollen and flaking off on the bottom, and the dresser in the bathroom (it houses ribbon and headbands in case you're wondering why the crazy Rigby's have a dresser in the bathroom) is pretty much shot. The carpet and pad needs replacing, obviously, and we're hoping the insurance agrees. We also need to get our washing machine fixed/replaced (also should be covered). You're probably thinking we have an old washing machine to flood like this. Nope. We bought it when we moved in 3 1/2 years ago.

We dropped into bed at 2:30am after putting a fan on downstairs and opening all the windows. Woke up this morning to a lovely mess, piles of laundry that need to be rewashed (silly me, I didn't carry up the last 2 loads after they were dry, so now they are all wet) and no washing machine to do it in, and stuff everywhere! Oh, and did I mention that I'll be gone at the dress rehearsal for the Youth Temple Celebration from 3 this afternoon until 10 or so tonight, which means I'll leave at 2 to take the kids to my wonderful Mom's house. Hmm, this is what I do best- make a mess and leave!

We were thinking last night "Why? What did we do wrong now?" and I thought about it... while the basement was flooding unbeknownst to us Michael was off being a scoutmaster and I was mowing the yard of the vacant house across the street that had grass and weeds a foot tall and we couldn't stand it anymore (our neighbors cheered when I finished it was such an eyesore). So, I guess the flood wasn't because we weren't doing something right. Just an entertaining experience and a forced home upgrade & organization project.