It’s March and that means Spring Flooding Season. That means Wallypop is prone to closing abruptly without notice for a week or more, any time between now and June – most likely in April after the ground thaws. This post is a warning of that possibility, and an explanation for when it happens.
My office is in our basement.
When we finished our basement, it had water problems in one portion, which we had taken care of. We use that portion for storage and finished the rest. That spring, a few weeks after Wally was born, the family room flooded.
And ever since, every year, that same room floods. Some years are worse than others. It’s not necessarily a huge deal for us – knowing this was a possibility, even though we’d never had problems in the rest of the basement before, we finished the floors with plastic laminated “wood” in one room, and vinyl tile in the rest. We store nothing on the floor (of any value, anyway) and the furniture is all relatively safe. The water has a clearly defined path – it overtakes the entire family room, then runs tidily towards the central drain in the basement, which is just outside my office.
Typically, the problem is just that we turn off the power to the basement to be on the safe side, so I can’t easily work.
Last year, a new hole sprang up, forming Lake Wallypop in my office. This proved to be much more of a challenge. Again, I store nothing (of value or that would be ruined) on the floor, and am obsessive about this during spring. It’s not a matter of things getting damaged, but rather a matter of getting TO the things. Also, I am reluctant to pack orders when there’s a chance I might drop something into the water and ruin it. And, well, it’s not pleasant working in an inch of water. And it’s neigh unto impossible to do so with a preschooler stomping around.
I want to emphasize that the water is merely RAINWATER that works its way into the basement. We’re not entirely sure if it’s high water table, a cistern that finally gave up, or whatever the deal is. But it’s just rain water. It’s very clean. The towels we use to mop up the shallower spots don’t even get dirty – just wet. It’s NOT sewage. You often hear about flooded basements with sewage backing up from the sewer, but that is NOT our problem (at least so far).
Filed under: Sweatshop
