Flooding at the Homestead: Part 1

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, we packed up the truck and headed up to the cabin for a relaxing long weekend. What happened was anything but relaxing….

Looking into Master Bedroom — Looking into the master bedroom after all the carpeting and pad had been removed. At this point, we had removed most of the water from the room.

When we arrived at the cabin, we could hear the fire alarms going off, but we couldn’t figure out why until we walked into the cabin. The entire back half of the cabin was flooded. The fire alarms had shorted out due to all of the water. We sprung into action. D turned off all the water in the house, and we started to sweep all the water out of the back of the house. We quickly removed all personal items from the water soaked area, and then D removed the water logged carpet and pad from the master bedroom.

Looking out of the Master Bedroom — The floor vents were filled with water. The drywall was saturated. The lights/fan had shorted out, so there was very little light available.

I called the insurance company while D tried to determine the cause of the flooding. It turns out it was a tiny copper pipe in the attic that went to the evaporative cooler. A pipe that we didn’t even know about was in the attic. We had insulated the other pipes and made sure the temperature in the house was at the recommended temperature for the area. He found the shut-off valve for the pipe so we would be able to have water in the house. The insurance company told us to do what we needed to in order to make the house safe.

Utility Room — This room (the utility room) was also flooded. The shelves and flooring were removed later in our demo.

With that, the craziness began. We did some clean-up on Wednesday night, and then moved all of our stuff upstairs. Thankfully, the living room, kitchen, and loft (which has 2 rooms and a bathroom) were all dry. Needless to say, it was a very late night, and we were exhausted by the time we were able to go to bed.

The next morning, I got up early to get the turkey in the oven. I was able to sleep a little longer after the turkey went into the oven, but I knew that I couldn’t sleep too long as there was a lot of work to be done – both in the kitchen (food) and the house.

We enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving dinner even though the house was in a state of chaos and Munchkin was feeling ill. After we ate, Munchkin rested while Daddy and I put the meal away. With full bellies, the work on the house had to begin. We had to get the cabin taken care of or we would be dealing with some serious mold and mildew issues.

To be continued….

Part 2

Part 3