No Drought Here

Wingnut · May 5, 2002

Well, it's been a great Sunday ... not!
I had to mix some coolant so I turned on the front outside faucet ... and when I turned it off, I could still hear water running - a bit. So, once I finished what I was doing inside, I figured I'd better go down in the crawlspace and see if another of those so-called frostless faucets was leaking.
When I lifted the trap to go down there ... imagine my surprise when I found out the sump pump had stopped working sometime in the last month or so ... and I had 15 inches of water ... let's see, 15" x 40 ft x 22 ft .. at least 800 cubic feet of water.
Fortunately I had a spare large volume sump type pump I bought when I moved here .... it's now been running for 8 hours and I'm starting to make headway ... looks like another 5-6 hours.
I had water standing in the ditch before ... I can imagine what it's like now with all that extra water pumped out there. Wonder how long it'll take me to dry this out ..... once I get all the water pumped out.
Ah well ... such are the joys of jhome ownership in the sticks .... and once again, the boy scout motto payed off.
Hmm ... which reminds me ... once it's all drained ... I still have to check out that leak ....

patrickg · May 5, 2002

Wingnut, ...and I thought I would get sympathy because I have to crawl under my mom's house to put the dryer vent back together where it came apart (jam fit - no clamp because I lost the machine screw that goes to the big hose clamp thingy). The carpenter grabbed the vent cover and messed with it while helping the vinyl guy with the sun room and my marginal-but-it-will-hold-till-I-get-a-chance connection fell apart.

Wow, the only time I ever came close to your sad tale was when I got a knock knock at my hatch (what they call the front door thingy on a sailboat) Seems the folks with the new boat next to us are sinking and are a bit nervous and would like to know if thay can borrow my emergency bildge pump with the long leads with gator clips and the 1 1/2 inch 15 ft hose on the output side. They say the best bilge pump is a scared man with a bucket but how long can you outrun a good electric centrifugal bildgepump on adreniline?

Seems his wife got up at 0530 to go to the head and was surprised to find herself standing in an inch of ocean above the floor boards. As is typical, there was a chain of events not one calamitous stroke. I had inspected his boat with him (I was US Coast Guard Aux. for 10 years and among other things did vessel exams) and pointed out how the galley sink was "Y"ed in with the bildge pump to save a through hull fitting but was not a good thing. Anyway corrosion got to a terminal strip that wasn't waterproofed and his OFF/MANUAL ON/ AUTOMATIC bildge pump switch was kaput. He could only run it on manual. He had a shaft log leak, not mutch but it needed attention. So, every evening he would pump the bildge till the itsy bitsy pump cavitated then he shut it off. This time there was some debris in the galley sink cloging the sink strainer/stoppper which when open acted as an accidental anti-syphon device. So when he pumped the bildge it primed the drain as a syphon loop and when he switched off the pump the entire ocean tried to syphon into his boat. This was noticed about 8 hours later.

Luckily we kept the engine's dip stick above water and the engine survived OK but the electrolysis currents literally physically ate the diodes out of his alternator. Had the engine been able to run we could have removed a hose from his raw water pump (fresh waer engine cooling system) and used it to pump water overboard as well.

Feel better now? At least your house probably won't sink.

Patrick

rf33 · May 5, 2002

/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gifYikes/w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif, that sounds like alot of H2O you had on your hands there wingnut. Too bad you could not send it down to the Rio Grande valley, I hear the Mexican Govt. is not honoring their part of our water treaty with them, and alot of S. Texas farmers are really going to loose most of their crops this year/w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif. Your story kind of reminds me of when I worked for a plumbing contractor in Fl. Went on a call to a condo on the beach (~20 stories) because someone heard water running in the elevator shaft (uh o). Got there just in time to see the maintenance man open the elevator door on the bottom floor (they had locked the elevator at the top) and water to come gushing out of it all over the lobby. We went to the pump room (where all of the shutoff valves were anyways), and found the fire system pump was running (double uh o). Called the fire dept, and then shut the pump off and closed the valves. Eventually we discovered that a 12" fire main was leaking in the floor below the lobby. The elevator shaft was only the half of it - it looked like you could sail a small vessel under that building. The leak had washed ALOT of dirt out from under the building and some mechanical engineers had to come out and figure out if the thing was stable enough to keep standing. After they gave it their seal of approval, I took our bobcat in the lobby (I love this part) with the jackhammer attachment, and let that floor have it. Found the source of the leak pretty quick, but the floors were about 14" thick, and to fix the leak, we had to replace a 21' length of the pipe, so lotsa jackhammerin. Loud inside that lobby too... Come to find out the pipe had split down the length of it. The split was about 10' long /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif. Using cheap Japanese steel pipe probably saved the original builder a few thousand dollars, but I hate to think what it cost the condo association in the long run.

Thomas · May 6, 2002

Maybe a fan blowing on the dirt will help dry things out qiucker.

Yep..if it one thing its another around the old home stead.

dmccarty · May 6, 2002

WingNut,

Here is a story about a crawl space. After you read this you will consider
yourself lucky. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

A few years ago a guy I worked with had a problem in his crawlspace. I
can't remember if it was a sump pump or not but it was pluming related.
He crawled under his house and fixed his problem. While he was there
he saw a big white pipe with a clean out connection. For some reason
he figured he would open the clean out. First Link in the disaster chain.
This was a real bad idea. The clean out was on the pipe that took the
house sewage into the street drain. Second link in the ol' chain. The
third and final link in the disaster was that fact that his house was
BELOW the street pipe. His house had to pump the sewage UP hill to
the city pipe.

This of course implies that the pipe he opened was DOWN hill from the
street pipe. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

He drained a pipe of sewage into his crawlspace. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif He was not
happy. He puked alot. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

He took some very LONG showers and applied quite a few bags of lime
in his crawlspace. He also puked driving to work at the mear thought
of what poured out of his clean out and ON him. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif He actually
had to pull of the road to puke...

Your leak could be worse..... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Later...
Dan McCarty

Wingnut · May 6, 2002

Since the water is from the groundwater and not from a little leak (it appears as though the valve isn't closing properly and water is still leaking into the hose outside), or the septic system ... I certainly understand now why they didn't put a basement under this place. I've been debating an addition so I could have a basement ... but ....
We've still got water standing in the pastures and the ditch is about 1/2 full .... and we're looking at rain and thunderstorms tonight. Guess I'd better make sure I've got the bypass hooked up well enough to cope with more water soaking in. When I checked before going to bed last night, I was down to about 2 inches ... and I didn't see anything coming out of the hose this morning ... hopefully that means the water level was down ... and not that I burned out a(nother) pump from excessive use ....
Also need to see if the dehumidifier that I had sitting down there is salvageable and can remove some of the humidity now.
Oh well, as was pointed out ... it ain't sinking ... and the house is dry ...

njrqs · May 6, 2002

Patrick

We have rented 3 houseboats at different times from the same company and always had problems (d'oh)

The first boat used to drain all the grey water from the shower etc. into the bilge and then pump it out from there.

Well the pump stopped working and the grey water built up to the point where it was all over the floor in the bottom of the boat. Now that was stinky !!!!

Another boat was a large cat. Over the period of the week I noticed an increasing list to the starboard hull. I (being the only boaty type on board) got worried about this and started looking around.

Found the right hull had tonnes of water in it from a leakign shaft seal and the pump wasn;t working. So we had to take shifts using the hand pump. Took us most of the night but managed to get most of water out of it.

Scary but not yuk.

No more boats from them by the way !!!!!

Hey another building leak story took us many months to find the problem. New $15m office complex. Water leaking into lift shaft. Tested for sewage and also used a dye down the toilets etc. and UV light to see where the leak came from.

Ended up being ground water from somewhere. Installed a pump in the lift pit and everyone just ignored it from there. (That was a real long storey cut real short)

Cheers

BrettW · May 6, 2002

A good house fire will dry that out quick! Makes it easy to get to that leak also. bw

Wingnut · May 6, 2002

Back to dampness rather than water, water, water. Ditch is pretty full, but the crawlspace is empty. Once I got to the point I could pull the new pump, I did some checking and the float switch was working intermittantly ... cleaned all the slime off, bopped it gently on the side a few times ... and then tied it off properly so it will be in the proper position to operate correctly ... and I'm back in business. Whomever had installed the pump had just left the float switch float at full length and I think it ended up getting tangled once or twice to the point where the float got rusty ... or just clogged. I've always tied them short to the handle so the float couldn't float too high, and had a more limited range of motion so it wouldn't get tangled. Of course, it never dawned on me to check the sump pump out when I bought the place (never had a water problem in Alberta ... but the water table here must be as high as Louisiana!)
Also turned off the valve inside so I can dismantle that leaky faucet outside. That should stop the doggone well pump from cycling every hour!
Water! Can't live without it, drown in it!

patrickg · May 6, 2002

WARNING no drought content in this post!

In the sumer time, even if the bilge pump doesn't get clogged with hair and soap scum from the shower, having the "grey" water run into the bilge to be pumped out isn't the neatest arrangement as it still can cause a SMELL. Worse yet, running shower and sink water into the bilge and pumping it out exposes you to the danger of having the bilge pump clogged with hair, soap scum, etc when you actually need it as a bilge pump, should the need arise.

Fear of sinking at sea has a way of wonderfully focusing your thoughts, doesn't it?

A friend that I used to fly, SCUBA, and sail with, chartered a medium sized sloop and took another pilot friend (non-sailor) off on a cruise to Catalina Island off the coast from Long Beach (LA, CA). As they were making a night crossing and the winds were very light and variable they were motoring along at about 6 KTS. The non-sailor got the hang of the tiller pretty quick and could hold a compass course well, helped along with his air navigation experience.
The non-sailor sees a light in the distance and asks if that is Catalina. My bud says it is a marker light on top of a 9 ft diameter spherical steel buoy marking some oil field equipment. My bud then goes below to get 40 winks prior to relieving his "crew" at the helm. There is an enourmous C_L_A_N_G!!!! and the sloop stops dead in a heartbeat. My bud startled awake, hops out of his berth and runs through the saloon to get to the cockpit in time to see the spherical buoy slipping astern as they start making headway again but then the the motor dies and there is smoke coming from below decks and all the lights, interior and running go out. Compounding all this is the fact that my bud realizes that his feet are wet from the water above the floor boards he just ran through.

He is having nightmare visions of the hull cracked open in a most unrepairable way and being stranded, adrift, at sea near a buoy that can't be climbed to awaid death from hypothermia, sharks, or ...

Short version of explanation of everything: The bozo crewman claimed the collision was the skipper's fault for lashing the dingy on the foredeck which when they approached the buoy close aboard, obscurred the view of the buoy and light. My bud said pilots make clearing turns when climbing out on a departure because they can't see under the nose at a high angle of attack and the crewman should have been smart enough to realize when he lost sight of the buoy he could make a small course change every so often to sneak a peek of the buoy to keep track of it.

Smoke and lights going out: Collision caused lose wiring bundle in the bilge to hit the prop shaft and wrap around it like an unwary tractor operator around a PTO shaft. This put out the lights and effectively switched off the engine but did not harm the battery.

Wet Feet: The shaft log was too lose and leaked a bit more copiously than neccessary to cool the packing gland/stuffing box A_N_D their was a hair ball jamming the bilge pump which also pumped the shower water overboard. So while running the engine they were slowly flooding the boat but the bilge pump didn't run. The design of the boat was such that the bilge was very very shallow and the amount of water in the bilge required to get above the floorboards was not great, just a few gallons.

They effected repairs and continued on but had to agree to dissagree about "fault" for the collision. I think it was a dumb mistake on the part of the crewman but everyone may not agree.

Maybe this made you feel better via 1. misery loves company, 2. they made dumber mistakes than you, and 3. they had worse luck.

About flooding buildings:

I think this was attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright... A client after taking possession of his home had a problem with his basement flooding and called the architect saying he has a problem with water rising in his basement. The architect says, "Rise above your problem."

Patrick