New York Renovator

I wrote about our power outage earlier this week. Power outages are rare for my neighborhood. My block is on the same grid as much of the commercial district, so the power company has extreme measures to keep this grid up and running. However, Monday we had a severe thunderstorm and we lost power for several hours that morning. Power outages give me the willies because we have two sump pumps in our basement that absolutely MUST stay on. If they are off for more than an hour, my basement floods.

Here’s a photo of our predicament Monday, when the water started to rise from the sump well. GULP.

Thank God, the power was restored before the water got too high. We’ve seen water rise up to three feet in that basement. It’s a constant worry, and I’ve seriously considered selling the property because the flooding causes me such anxiety. I just cannot live in a house and on property that floods when we have moderate to heavy rains. We are in the process of (slowly) dealing with the problem, but a large part of the problem has to do with my property is the only greenspace in a large area of asphalt parking lots, and there has been a lot of over-development in the lands up the hill from me. My yard seems to be the depository of all the run-off water, and my lawn can only soak in so much. So we have a high water table and it seeps up through the basement.

Anyway, all is well today. But I’m off to clean the basement floor again before it starts to smell like a pond!