indoor pool

On the morning of the day sandwiched between my [Ted's] last day of teaching and our trip to Wisconsin I headed down to make coffee.

I heard a noise – diffuse, but loud.

“Is that the street sweeper?” I wondered?

A quick check outside suggested that it was not. Could that be coming from the basement?

A quick check down there revealed that the noise was in fact coming from the basement. I rushed downstairs to investigate a situation that was clearly a bad one, only to discover that we had in fact crossed into the realm of disaster.

My steps picked up pace as I realized that the sound was in fact being caused by water was jetting out of a broken pipe connection...

thump thump thump went my steps, picking up pace.

thump thump splash went my steps as I moved from the stairs onto the basement floor which was, my shoes and feet discovered, covered in about 4 inches of water.

At a nearly irrecoverable state of dismay, we did manage to recall that our next door neighbor had required the services of someone to remove water from his basement, and that our neighbors across the street had recommended a plumber who helped them out of a similar situation.

Phone calls followed, and by 10 a.m. we were visited by a disaster restoration squad who Kelly watched arrive at the house as if rushing to a fire. Hoses went into our new swimming pool and removed it into the tanks of the two disaster restoration vans. (They were welcome to it.)

Next came the friendly plumber, whose van featured a reassuring smiley face. He identified the source of our problem as one of the many corroded-looking basement pipe fixtures. Sadly, the one that broke was by no means the worst of the bunch, so, in the interest of avoiding future basement adventures, we commissioned (and are now the owners of) a new plumbing system for the basement. The highlight of which, from my perspective, is that the refrigerator’s icemaker is now hooked up very nicely, and is producing the ice for the drinks required by this whole mess.