I am behind again with my Wordy Wednesday. (I will get back on track after my class is done....three weeks left!) It has been a bit of a busy week here. There was some crazy weather this week that resulted in some major flooding around town. Joe's work actually was in one of the areas in town that was evacuated. Schools requested that parents come and pick their kids up early on Thursday and they outright cancelled school on Friday. Some places were hit badly and I thought that we would be safe as we aren't by any creeks. Not so much.
I came home on Thursday (which was the worst of it) and the house smelled. I thought that it was a load of laundry that had stood in the washer a day too long (please tell me I am not the only one that does this...) so I reran the washer with vinegar and a little bleach and went about my afternoon. A couple of hours later Joe came home and I found out I was oh so wrong.
Turns out the water table was so high because of the flooding that the water actually seeped up from the ground into our crawl space. We have plenum heating which was popular when the house was built because it was supposed to be more energy efficient. I don't really understand how it is supposed to work other than we don't have vents in our crawl space to the outside and the crawl space is filled with fine sand.
Joe went right for the guest bedroom which has access to the crawl space. He lifted the access panel which revealed giant puddles of standing water. He crawled down there and had to move quickly. Luckily, there wasn't standing water everywhere. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to how it is walking along the beach right at the water's edge. It wasn't enough to get a sump pump but it was enough that is a huge problem. Much of the insulation will need to be replaced and we are really concerned about mold. Part of how the plenum heating works is by heating the sand, which is supposed to hold heat longer and then require less heating. Well, now it is a dark, damp and warm (when the heat is on) place; perfect for mold.
We went and bought a dehumidifier which has a 45 pint capacity. We actually put it in the crawl space and have been emptying it every 4 hours (that is almost 6 gallons). Cranking the heat seemed like a logical thing to do to dry it out, but my sister did some quick research and found out that running the air conditioner is actually a better idea (warm=mold) so we have been trying to do that when we can stand it.
This is a pain in the ass for sure. A remora that is not welcome.
Luckily, though, it has gotten better. The water has receded across town and there are no longer standing puddles of water in the crawl space. There are actually parts of the sand (on top at least) that were wet that are now dry. We didn't lose any of our belongings and while the house really stinks we still have a house and we have the means to solve that problem eventually. There is huge damage across town and I am so, so grateful that we are not facing that kind of loss. Some of the pictures of the damage were absolutely heartbreaking.
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