Now realistically I know that we are not the centre of the universes, and as I don’t believe in any deities, it’s pretty hard to imagine the random nature of the universe coinciding to pick on us, specifically.
But it sure does feel that way sometimes.
Let me walk you through this…
Yesterday it became apparent that our house actually came with a swimming pool. The insulation contractor came, looked at the house, and in the process of preparing to go into the crawl space we discovered that the house was actually standing in about 6″ of water.
This did not make me happy.
However, the house does have a sump pump and so with some trepidation, I pulled an extension cable through the window and plugged it in. In an astonishing first of its kind experience, the pump worked.
However, it demonstrated why the crawlspace is flooded, and the pump disconnected.
Yes, in another fine example of “why do something properly if you can do it both cheaply and badly”, our gutters drain in to above-ground soak-away pipes which… are completely blocked once they do get in to the ground. So while the pump did pump the water out from under the house, it immediately leaked out of the pipe and then poured back in through the crawl-space hatch.
Hi-la-ri-ous.
Cue much faffing and, in the end, abuse of the vacuum cleaner hose, which allowed me to at least get the worst of it out and turn our garden into a swamp. Of course, the pointfullness of this activity was somewhat reduced by the fact that it rained overnight, and this morning.
So I got to the house today having bought 20 feet of soakaway drainage hose. My thought being that it would probably be okay if it was not full of leaves and mud, at least until we get the new gutters and get some soakaways (or drywells, as they seem to be called here) built. I ended up pulling the one out of the ground in the front garden and replacing it with one of the new 10′ runs. I also created a new connection for the sump pump that allowed me to leave it connected. Don’t ask*.
Then I tried that at the back, but it rapidly became apparent that the water was just running out of the soak-away hose and back into the crawlspace.
So I unplugged the pump, got in the car and headed back to the hardware shop. As I drove off, one street away, I pulled aside to allow a fire engine to go flying past. I had the usual momentary thought of “I wonder if they’re going to our house, nah”.
And I continued on my way.
And I was away for all of, maybe, 20 minutes.
I returned with 10′ of non-perforated hose (I should have got twenty foot).
And then I found this note on our door…
And then I nudged the door and discovered that the frame was split, and the door no longer locked. Thankfully, because I wasn’t gone long, it doesn’t look like anything was taken. I pulled some nails out from the trim and used them to put the door-frame back into some kind of holdable state, then fished in the giant box of pulled nails and screws (for chucking in metal recycling, conceptually), and pulled out a couple of long not-too-rusty screws. Using them I could fix the latchplate into the building frame rather than just the door frame.
And it at least sort-of locks. Oly Fire Dept are coming tomorrow to replace the door and frame.
But seriously. Seriously!
I was gone 20 minutes. If they’d have arrived 5 minutes earlier I’d’ve been at the house. And it was the wrong house anyway.
The world is laughing at me, I swear it.
And of course, because the house is only semi-secured I felt I needed to pull all the tools and my bike out. So they’ve all come home, but in the process of arguing my bike into the car, I managed to smear oil onto the backs of the seats. Which is pretty irritating.
* Did you ask? *sigh* Okay, I drilled a hole in the siding, in a section we’re planning to cut out, fed the cable through and duct-taped over it.
