The Great Morris Flood of 07

Alright, maybe not the great flood, but I did hear that down by the hospital some cars were flooded. Also, a nursing home in the area had to be evacuated. There's a possibility that our weekend service will be canceled (or transmogrified) due to evacuees being housed at White Oak Elementary where we meet.

The Reeves household had all of the excitement we could stand and then some. Thursday night, we arrive home to a partially flooded basement. Water (that we attributed to an overfilled blow-up swimming pool) had flooded one of our basement window wells and seeped into the basement. About a half inch of water over about 1/3 of our unfinished basement. Crappy, but not the end of the world.

In about 2 hours, I had cleaned up most of the mess and had turned my attention to drying the indoor-outdoor carpet that we put down there, but that's when the action started.

"The floodgates of heaven" were opened and the aforementioned window well proceeded to fill to a height of about 14 inches and stream into the basement. This time about 3/4 of the basement had a little less than an inch... including our storage area.

Not fun! With a couple of shop vacs, a submersible pump, a five gallon bucket, lots of towels, and the much appreciated help of a very good friend (who we pulled out of bed at midnight to join the effort), we battled the flood, finally coming out on top about 2:30 in the A.M. Carpets all rolled up to be pitched... submersible pump suspended in the window well to keep more water from coming in... lots of disgusting towels piled up to act as a levee of sorts keeping water contained in the area of the sump... fans blowing the cement dry, we headed for bed.

So Friday morning, my son and I went sump pump shopping and then I started digging into the defective window well. It turns out that there was effectively no drain at the bottom. It was filled completely to the bottom of the window with clay. I started digging (no room for a shovel--I used a big kitchen spoon and a burger flipper) and dug down about 18 inches before I found the top of the plastic drain tile (pipe) that should have been collecting the water that came into the well. I ended up digging down about 8 more inches and installing my new sump pump into the window well, in case the same happened again.

Another friend who knows ever so much more about all things than I, came over and we attacked the drain tile. Not only was it buried but it was completely filled (probably down to the footing) with clay. We dug out as much as we could and then playing dentist with it... flooding with water via a water hose duct taped to a long probe, and then sucking out the muck with a shop vac. Two hours later, the drain would actually handle a little bit of the water. Hallelujah!


Pretty much all day Friday I worked with a crazed urgency to beat the thunderstorms that were supposed to be headed our way. I got a lot done--probably a lot quicker than I would have otherwise--but the storms never came. Thanks, God!

So unless we get more surprises today (Saturday) the Great Morris Flood of 07 seems to be over for the Reeves family.