help my basement flooded!!!
By lbinkley
@lbinkley (1075)
United States
February 21, 2008 10:19am CST
So, I was getting ready to leave yesterday and when I went to put my dogs in the basement.. I see that there was at least a good 4 inches of water in there, because my sump pump quit working!!!!! It was awful! Problem is though, now that it is all draining out I need to go down there and assess the damage. I had 2 treadmills that were submerged, furniture, boxes of clothes, Christmas ornaments. I am just wondering how long I should wait before I see if the electric stuff was fried or can dry out, how to I get my basement dry in the middle of winter? There's no ventilation unless I open a window, and then all the water will freeze! Also, what type of stuff is saveable and what should I say just forget it and add that to my insurance claim? I had a lot of stuff down there and almost everything was submerged. Sooo.... anyone else been through this? How did you go about cleaning up? Also... how long did it take, and do you still have a mildew scent in your basement? I don't even wanna begin to tackle this yet... :(
4 responses
@lbinkley (1075)
• United States
25 Feb 08
Thanks you very much for your response jarves, but I DO have a drainage system in my basement! My home is only 4 years old, and I am pretty far up north, so when the snow melts it is pretty much mandatory to have something like this in place. HOWEVER, the sump pump, which is supposed to keep the basement nice and dry, had something wrong with it, and if the pump doesn't work then the drainage system isn't really all too effective. It wasn't for lack of planning trust me.
@cynicalandoutspoken (4725)
• United States
21 Feb 08
I feel your pain hun. I rented a place about 10 years ago and the land lord swore to me that the basement didn't leak and that I could use it for storage.
I moved in in October and all winter it was fine but as soon as spring hit I had a river running through my basement. I lost everything that I had down there, and worse yet, I didn't have renters insurance.
When I called the landlord to complain he told me my things weren't his problem and I should have known better than to put boxes on the floor.
WTF? He said I could use the basement for storage. Silly me for thinking that meant I could put boxes down there.
Good luck cleaning up your mess it isn't going to be fun.
1 person likes this
@lbinkley (1075)
• United States
25 Feb 08
Thanks for the reply. Yeah I would have been VERY angry with that landlord for leading me to believe I could store things too!! I'm sorry to hear you lost everything! Fortunately... I think I might be a bit luckier than that because I had a lot of them stacked.. and so far it seems like the important stuff was stacked higher up and didn't get wet.
@p3halliwel2005 (3156)
• Philippines
21 Feb 08
I don't have a basement but every year flood waters come inside our house and wets almost everything around our house ruining alot of things. What I do after the flood I mop the house clean of flood water putting zonrox bleach on my water pail so it will kill the bacteria. If paper materials got wet I dry them when the sun comes out. We also use the electric fan to dry the floor. In regards to the other items we salvage anything we can salvage. If the sun is out we just display them out in the sun. We clean them up first though so it won't stink with either soap or water or if we cant use water on it I wipe it with wet cloth. About the smell you can use charcoal on that.They really can get rid of awful smells. try it. :)
@schilds (410)
• United States
21 Feb 08
Check your yellow pages for water damage, or water cleanup people. There is a guy here that has some huge fans that he will set up to help dry stuff out - he also has a truck mounted carpet cleaner to suck the water out of carpets. I would say anything upholstered at the very least needs to be cleaned professionally - anything else fabric needs to be washed and dried. Paper stuff is probably a lost cause, including boxes. Hard christmas ornaments and anything else hard is probably ok - just will probably need to be reboxed. Was the water clean - or was it black water? You might need to treat everything with bleach. Not sure about the electronics - I would give them a good couple of days to dry before I even tried plugging them in to test. Our garage floods once in a while when the city's sewer main backs up. We haven't lost a lot of stuff, but it is a pain in the rear - we have to disinfect everything - thankfully it isn't in the house!!! Good luck!
