On November 19th, our basement flooded. Roughly 60% of the downstairs living space was soaked and we had to madly scramble to move everything to the upper floor to avoid water damage. Calls went in to insurance and ServiceMaster (for water extraction) and to work as well as I had to be home to let folk in, coordinate quotes, and receive the information needed to manage the repair process.
As it turns out, home owners insurance does not cover ground water intrusion, nor rain water intrusion, nor intrusions due to man-made/caused issues (such as, oh, improper drainage, using improper hardware to secure framing studs and punching through the concrete pad, or failure to recognize foundation issues and appropriately address them…. intrusion of ground water being second only to actual structural issues). Nor would flood insurance have covered it as it was not a “standing body of water greater than 6 inches”.
So, at the three week mark, we have now been through:
- Full scale industrial water extraction
- Loss of carpet padding
- Loss of roughly 40% of the baseboards due to (a) water damage, and (b) the fact that they were not actually pressure treated wood, but some manner of fabricated crap.
- Loss of the lower 65% of the basement wall (either to water damage or having to be pulled out for repairs
- Loss of the stairs (which had to be pulled out to get to the foundation wall behind them)
The remedy? Step by step, it included:
- Break out of 6″ wide boundary of concrete around the interior perimeter of the basement at the foundation wall,
- Excavation of roughly 2″ of mud/clay/water that immediately filled the trench upon completion of #1,
- Placement of sand, gravel, a five-part molded drain system wrapped in semi-permeable fabric, followed by another layer of gravel,
- Installation of sump pump set roughly 4′ into the basement (beneath what was the cement pad),
- Pouring and setting of concrete over the previously mentioned drain system and around the pump,
- Coring of foundation and exterior house wall to run drainage piping to the exterior,
- Excavation and removal of the not-to-code drainage pipes installed by seller,
- Replacement of said drainage pipes that actually ARE to code; sealed around downspouts and routed to…,
- A new infiltration pit placed in the front yard (excavation another three feet lower than the seller’s 1″ pit, inclusion of sand, gravel, and wrap of gravel with fabric to prevent clogging),
- Fitting all downspout drains and the exterior piping for the sump pump into routing to the new infiltration pit,
- Replacing all the dirt/mud/clay excavated to manage the above,
- Replacing the stair forms downstairs.
Total time required: Three days.
Amount covered by insurance: $0.00
Total cost: I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll leave it at this – we had to take a loan, our credit cards are now maxed, my daughter is coming out for the holidays and we’ll all be sitting and staring at the damn walls together. 🙁
And we’re still not done. We now need to:
- Have a dedicated outlet installed for the pump,
- Get the wall put back in and painted,
- Replace the lost baseboards,
- Buy and get new carpet padding installed,
- Get the carpet reseated in the entire basement.
I photographed the process for some future day when this information may come in handy. While it seems I could go after the seller, I strongly suspect she would only blame the contractors, who would in turn tell me to deal with THEIR insurance company and, between losing time at work (I’m a consultant) and paying for all that rigamarole would easily eclipse the expense… well… I have just decided to let karma handle it. Not worth the energy to be angry and I’d rather just get on with my life, albeit deeper in debt as a result of this than I have ever before been IN my life (with all the accompanying stress).
Anyway… for your “viewing pleasure”… our madcap adventure in home maintenance and repair: