Disasters Happen!

So, why am I blogging at 2:30 in the morning …(actually, I’m writing this in Word because my internet connection is down but I’ll post it at the time I wrote it) … why so late at night/early in the morning … because I’m waiting for the two Disaster Recovery of Utah technicians to finish ripping out the carpet padding in part of my play room downstairs, remove insulation that is wet in the furnace room and install drying fans and a dehumidifier. Yep … water damage is the name of the game at our house tonight.
Friday, I did a load of laundry. In that load was a pocket full of rose petals, compliments of Jessica. I cleaned out all the rose petals and ran the laundry again, but my washer still had some in it so I decided to check the filter tonight. I have a front loading washer, and the filter is easily accessed at the bottom of the washer through a little door. I took it out and cleaned it out and put it back in. I do this every now and then, got it down so I don’t make a mess or anything as water does pour out of it when you remove it. But, evidently, I don’t have it down because I didn’t tighten it all the way when I put it back in.

I started a load of wash and headed upstairs to tuck the girls in. I fell asleep while snuggling with Taylor and when Steve came to wake me up he said we had a problem. Two inches of standing water in my laundry room, entry from the garage and my ½ bath by the kitchen. Towels, towels, more towels and about 2 hours later, it was all dry and cleaned up. But, then I thought I better check downstairs because there had been two vents and an air return that were near the water. MORE TOWELS!!!!!!! It had gone into the duct system and drained into the furnace room, kitchenette and the storage room that houses the servers and other computers that run our businesses, house, internet … MORE TOWELS!!!! This is the rail on my stairs to the basement outside. This is where we hung all the towels and rugs that were SOAKED. This is a portion of the towels I used. There were some already in the wash when I took this and more still downstairs in the basement.
I called Jason and Michelle to borrow MORE. There was THAT much water. If you know anything about computers, you’ll be concerned about now about the server. Imagine, EVERYTHING to run my business and Steve’s business plus several others all on my server and it sitting in water! It looked BAD at first. Steve couldn’t access it from the keyboard and monitor hooked up to it. But shortly after I got more towels from Jason and Michelle, Jason and Steve were able to access it and shut it down. We won’t know until tomorrow when he hooks things back up, but it looks like we didn’t lose it. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE let that be the case!

Then we discovered the wet drywall and ceiling in the kitchenette and wet insulation in the furnace room so Jason suggested we call a recovery company – just to make sure we prevent mold.

So, now we are waiting on them to finish recovery and then we wait until Monday for the estimator to come out and really decide the damage. But, the preliminary news is – it could be A LOT worse! Since we had it all cleaned up before they arrived, they didn’t have to do any water extraction which should save us some money – lots of towels to dry though! The tile in the laundry room, bathroom, entryway and kitchenette should also be ok since we caught it quickly. The water did NOT reach my hardwood floor in my kitchen so that is not damaged! The ceiling in the kitchenette downstairs is not bowing which should mean no replacing drywall. The only carpet that is affected is a strip about 3 feet wide along the wall downstairs – so only about a 3 foot by 10 foot section of padding will need to be replaced. It could definitely be worse. I’ll post more info Monday when I know more! Until then we have 7 of these big fans in our house - 5 in the basement and 2 in the laundry room that will run for about 3 days to dry everything out. And there is a big humidifier too.