Tons of snow this year...
Good news: No basement flooding at either house when all the snow finally melted.
? news (good/bad): Elevated water table in the aquifers under town - good for the town wells; problematic when we get rainstorms.
Bad news: We had daily rain for 6 or 7 days in a row, ending with a full day of non-stop rain, which rose the water tables so high that it had nowhere to go, but into people's basements. Yesterday we had 5-6 inches of standing water in our basement.
Bad news: Hubby was at work when I discovered the furnace was making quite a racket & went to look and saw water just below the top of the bottom step into the basement & things floating. Of course, I turned off the furnace (from upstairs) & made sure to wait for the fan to stop (no way to turn it off from upstairs) while set to auto. It took a few minutes, but once the furnace stopped trying to produce heat, the fan did stop.
Bad news: My dominant hand is useless to do anything to help with the basement dry out, so Hubby had to do it all himself when he got home from work. He had to go buy a pump & some hoses & clamps & pumped water out through a basement window out to the driveway & far down toward the street. We have a long drive, so it was a long hose, since we don't want the water just soaking back into the ground near the foundation.
Good news: A few hours into this process, more than 80% of the water was gone from the basement.
Bad news: It started seeping back in because the water table is still high and the storm drains are overloaded, so there's nowhere for the water to go until the water table levels decrease and storm drains drain more water away from our neighborhood. Hubby's back was killing him from sweeping water toward the area where the pump sat (the lowest point in that basement room.) I know how that goes: I've swept my fair share of water toward drains or open doors in my lifetime (in this and other houses after flooding incidents.
Good news: Overnight the water didn't rise above what it was when I went to sleep (about 3 inches deep.) So the Hubs started up again pumping water out of the basement. When the plumbing company opened up, I called for a service call to assess the water heater (pilot light & burner unit flooded) & the furnace (same, plus the motor & fan & anything else possibly damaged.)
Good news: Plumber with great sense of humor, and of course, the necessary skills, came out within an hour. Water heater burner unit needed cleaning up & drying out & he got that done pretty quickly, lit the pilot light & we now have hot water again. Furnace was a bigger, more time consuming fix, but it's done now too. The motor needed drying out; same with the fan; needed a new non-soggy filter; needed a new circuit board. The fan had thrown water all over inside and burned out the circuit board. Fairly straightforward fix and now we heat again.
Bad news: Water keeps on coming. Also there are three distinct rooms, one with a long narrow closet, so basically 4 rooms in our basement, all with their own high & low points; the water level in each room can remain independent of the other two room because of the high points between the doorways. So basically, lakes in each room independent of the others when the water remains below those high points, which happens because....
Bad news: There are floor drains in only two of these rooms.
Good/bad news: The water heater is in one room with a floor drain. The furnace is in the other room with a floor drain. Why is this good or bad? During flooding, water rises from below ground up through the drains. When is it good? When the humidifier in the AC needs to drain water, there is a drain where the hose drains toward; same for water heater in other room. Of course this is only good when the drains are draining water away, not when they are spewing water into the basement.
Bad news: These floor drains appear (at this point in Hubby's estimation) not to be connected to each other in any way. The floor is solid concrete, of course, so we can't really check on this. How does he come to this conclusion? When he runs the pump in one room, it has no effect on the other room that has a drain. Water is seeping up through the drains (which drain to a layer of rocks/pebbles below the house.) So periodically, he moves the pump between the two rooms to pump out water to keep it below the level of the water heater bottom. Then back again to do the same in the room with the furnace.
Bad news: Hubby doesn't think he can go to work tomorrow unless the water stays below an inch or so; low enough as to not put out the water heater pilot light & flood the burner unit. He believes he will have to babysit the pump all night long because it has to be unplugged when the water gets too low & plugged back in when the water level starts rising again; like about every 15 minutes. I told him I could do that & had to prove it by bringing out my spare (for travel) surge protector with an on/off switch & plugging the power cord in with that, because I can't unplug or plug the two cords (the pump's power cord & long extension cord) together any other way (my hand is in a cast & I can't grip them well enough without use of my thumb or pinky finger). But I can flip an on/off switch. Of course he is still worried I won't do it well enough while he sleeps or while he is at work. So, unless he is willing to trade shifts with me, he plans to be up all night & not go to work again tomorrow so he can babysit the pump, until the water table decreases.
Good news: He is planning to go buy a wet/dry vac so he can suck up water in the other rooms, carry it and dump that water near the pump, so he (or I) won't have to keep moving the pump between rooms.
Bad news: I do not know if I can manage emptying a wet/dry vac. with my dominant hand (and thumb & pinky finger) out of commission. I will only know after he buys it and we test that out. I had one years ago, but got rid of it years before we moved out here.
Bad news: He doesn't seem interested in learning the speed of water seepage gauged to depth. IMO, that would give us a reasonable estimation of exactly how often the pump has to be turned back on, which would mean neither of us would have to sit on the basement steps babysitting the pump continually.
Good news: Once he gets so exhausted, he has to sleep, I can do that & maybe come up with a schedule and use my kitchen timer or phone alarms to set up a timely schedule to use going forward.
Good news: Forecast says no rain for the next 10 days.
