Misadventures in Paradise, late night edition... Just after I crawled into bed last night, iPad in hand for some evening reading, Debbie came in to tell me that one of our basement casements was threatening to overflow into the cat room. There were several inches of water in the bottom of it, she said, and if it rose any more it was going to spill through the window bottom.
I threw on my nightgown and headed down to the basement with her. There we discovered that the water was already leaking in – the water had risen in just the few minutes she had left. When I cracked the window open to take a better look, the water came flooding into the cattery. Fortunately the floor in the cattery (and the baseboard) is tile, so that water wasn't going to do any damage. But the water in the casement was another story altogether.
We went to work. I emptied the casement (using a bucket) into the cattery sink. Debbie ran out to the barn, got the mop and bucket, and started cleaning up the floor. The water I pulled out with the bucket was full of leaves and twigs, and this kept clogging the cattery sink. I practically froze my hand off repeatedly cleaning that drain screen out. Once we got the immediate threat removed, I went outside to see what the heck was causing this. I found that workmen – either the fencing crew or the painters – had damaged a downspout pipe. Water was streaming out of the hole onto a sidewalk, and flowing downhill to the edge of the casement, about six feet away. I made a temporary patch for the hole in the pipe, and then shoveled some dirt to make an earthen dike to keep the water from flowing down toward the casement. That all worked, but it won't suffice for the long haul, of course. We finished cleaning up the basement and draining the casement, and then went to bed.
This morning I could see better (in the daylight). I'm going to run up to Home Depot and get another gutter pipe, to get that water out into our yard when it rains next time. That will do for now, until we can get something more permanent done...
