When it rains, it POURS!!

Well, for those of you who have been sitting back thinking that I need a few more trials in my life because it has just been too easy & uneventful over the last few weeks, you got your wish on Friday. The day started out pretty good. I did some clothes shopping in the morning and then came home in time for Luke to get off the kindergarten bus. We were out front playing because it was a very warm day and I thought, why don't I get the water turned on outside and run through the sprinkler zones to see what we need to do to get them ready to start watering the lawn.

To let you know, the water shut-off valve for the outdoor water is about 6-7 feet underground in our front yard. It is accessed by a hole in the ground and we have a huge "key" that is about 8 feet long that you lower down the hole in the yard and twist it until it feels like it is on the valve correctly and then you turn it about a half turn to turn the water on or off. The key is just a large iron bar that has a C-shape on one end to fit over the valve and comes to a "T" at the other end which makes a handle.

It took me about 2 tries to get the water turned on and then I went to the sprinkler controller in the garage to cycle through the 6 zones. The first 2 zones are in the front and they both seemed to work alright. The water pressure didn't seem to be as strong as it should be but I didn't think too much of it. Sometimes it takes a while for the sprinklers to get water all through the lines and work as they should. The next 2 zones are in the backyard and when I switched to those zones, neither of them worked. I wasn't too concerned again because we had some problems with those valves last year. The thought also crossed my mind that maybe the water pressure was too low to turn those on since they operate a little differently than the front ones. The next 2 zones are on the side of the house and those didn't work either. So my next thought was that there was something wrong with the electrical connection that goes to those 4 valves. The valves for the back and side are located together in the backyard (the front ones are in a separate sprinkler box).

Well, I ran through the front ones again and then to the back and while it was on one of the back sections I went out back to see if I could hear the water trying to get to the sprinklers. While I was looking over the backyard, there was a weed sticking up that really seemed odd to me and I decided to walk out there to pull the weed. On my way back to the house I happened to look down into the window well that goes to the kids' play room in the basement and to my dismay, the well was full with about a foot of water.

I quickly ran to the garage to shut off the sprinklers and then I ran to the front yard to try and turn the water off. Then I quickly got the kids in the house and ran upstairs to grab some towels and then I ran down to the play room to see what was happening down there. There was water leaking in from the window down the wall to the carpet. I hurried to move some toys away from the window and I stuffed some towels on the windowsill and tried to mop up some of the water. I then ran upstairs and grabbed a bucket and ran back outside to the window well. I lifted off the grate on top of the well and climbed down the ladder to get to the water at the bottom. I got a bucketful of water and lifted it up to the top to dump. I tried to get Luke to carry the bucket but it was a little too heavy for him to move very far. Luckily my neighbor, Lois, happened to walk in her backyard as this was happening and noticed me lifting out buckets of water from my window well. She came over to see if I needed help. She went to her house and grabbed a couple of more buckets and then I would fill the buckets and hand them to her to dump out on the lawn. Luke was able to lift some of the smaller buckets and sometimes I wouldn't fill them as full so that he could lift them. Blondie & Kitty also wanted to help and got some of their small toy buckets and were filling them up with water to dump in the yard. I thought that we were making good progress because the water was definitely not as high on the window or on my legs.

(You can get an idea of how high the water was in the window well by looking at this picture. On the right side of the window you can see some dirt marks. The highest mark is about how high the water was when I noticed the problem.)

My neighbor had to run back to her house to check on a pie she had in the oven and while she was gone, the water was definitely higher than when she had left. I kept listening to see if I heard any water running and neither of us could hear anything. When she came back after checking on her pie though it was clear that the water was still coming into the window well. So I ran out front and tried once again to turn off the water. This time I knelt down on the ground so I could hear and feel better what I was doing and I clearly heard the water shut off. I then ran out back again and we started hauling more buckets. This time it didn't take long to realize that I had finally stopped the water and we quickly emptied the window well. While I was finishing up outside, Lois went downstairs with my kitchen trash can and wrung the towels into the trash can and managed to mop up some more of the water. She then came back upstairs and stayed outside with the kids while I went down with our shop-vac and started vacuuming water out of the carpet.

I then called DH at the vault to let him know what was going on. Then I brought the kids inside and let them watch some cartoons while I worked down in the basement. When M&M got home I had her help with some of the vacuuming while Luke helped me clear most of the toys out of the play room. We have a carpet cleaning vacuum which I also used to suck some of the water out of the carpet. M&M & I took turns with the two vacuums, in-between emptying water out of them.

DH surprised me by actually coming home at 3:00 (the earliest he has been home in a LONG time). He surveyed the extent of the damage in the play room and then went outside to see if he could find the problem in the sprinkler system since I had things pretty much under control in the house. My guess was that since the leak hadn't stop when I turned off the sprinklers with the water still turned on, that the leak was in the main intake line to the backyard sprinkler box. It turns out that I guessed right. When DH got down to the sprinkler pipes right next to the window well, there was about a two-foot long split down the pipe that originated at an elbow joint that then feeds into the sprinkler box. We were able to get some parts to fix it that night and DH installed the pieces the next day. We turned the water back on once the glue was dry and it appears that we have fixed the problem.

M&M & I managed to vacuum out all the water we could from the carpet and then we just set some fans on the carpet and opened the window to get as much air circulation through there as possible. Right now the carpet is mostly dry and we will have to keep an eye on it to see if there is any permanent damage. If there isn't then we will come out of this experience relatively unscathed, but having learned a lot.

Lessons I Learned:
- Never turn on the water at the start of the season unless your husband (or other able-bodied adult) is around.
- Learn to use the wet part your wet/dry vac before there is an emergency - it doesn't help to have to run around looking for the instruction manual when you need to be using it NOW.
- Having a wet/dry vac that can hold a lot is not necessarily a good thing. 10 gallons of water weigh a LOT. I luckily caught it before it was full and managed to carry the vac upstairs to dump the water out in the sink.
- Keep fans around even if you think you will never need them. We have talked many times about getting rid of some of our fans since we moved from our apartment to a house with central air. This is not the first occasion that we have needed them...
- We now know that the main line for the water sprinklers runs all the way around 3 sides of our house. I'm not sure if I like how the previous owner designed the sprinkler system...
- If your husband has been working late hours and you want him home sooner, call him and tell him there has been a little problem at the house...

Things I Am Grateful For:
- An awesome neighbor who helped me out.
- A husband who can fix things (and loves to figure out how things work).
- A weed in the backyard that really stuck out and made me want to pull it.
- My kids who wanted to help, even if they couldn't do too much.
- The water pipe broke near the window to the toy room and not the window next door which has all of our computers & equipment in it.
- Most of the toys in the play room are kept in plastic storage containers so there wasn't any damage to anything in the room (other than possibly the carpet).