Re: [gardeners] Floyd

penny x stamm (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Fri, 17 Sep 1999 00:24:58 -0400 

.
Byron, Bonnie, everybody in the way -- how did you fare with
the wind and rain..?  I do hope that damage was minimal, 
and things are  back to normal now. 

We had 3 adults bailing for 5 hours like in a fireman's bucket 
brigade. Then Jimmie said he was going to run a garden hose
up the concrete steps, over the wooden banister, and down the
big lawn...  The near end would have a "quick connector" on it. 
Attached to the house right there is another hose with a matching
"quick connector". He fastened them together, and then had me
turn on the water from the house hose (by way of the inside 
valve) and in a minute, he broke apart the quick connector under
the dangerous water which was rising in the pit, and thus 
started a syphon to the back yard. In about 5 minutes the pit was
emptied, and as it rose up from the ground again, the syphon 
kept it emptying!  What a relief!!!

The three individual rivulets of water which came in the wall 
started up again -- 47 years in the house, and this never happened
before until 3 weeks ago in the last storm!  Two of them are on 
inside walls, imagine that...  I mixed up the hydraulic cement we
had purchased and Jimmie used a star drill to chip away some loose
building block, and then patched the hole. It's not quite 100% sealed
yet, but at least 95%, so it's not flooding.  

However, we are still in future trouble. We've had a waterproofing
expert, a general contractor, a fireman-jack-of-all-trades, and an
engineer in here, looking at our problem, and no one has come up 
with a solution that makes sense to me. We've left the 4" rubber
expansion plug in place in the vertical clay pipe, just to prevent a
sudden catastrophe should it start raining, but water rises up around
that pipe, and could do us in.  Maybe a jackhammer will be in order.
Hate to think that way....  

We truly were blessed when the original prediction of Floyd hanging
around until Friday night was changed to Thursday night!  We were
prepared to spend the whole 48 hours downstairs in the workshop, 
guarding the water problem -- and now we can have a bowl of
cereal, take a shower, and collapse into bed~!  Pure joy .....
.
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Penny, NY
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.-


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