We’ve made great progress in the house in the first months we’ve been in there. Slowly the mountain of boxes is dissipating in the garage, furniture is getting sorted and feeling like its where it belongs, items in the kitchen can easily be found, some paint has been rolled to spruce up spaces, and overall we are making good use of space in the larger accommodations. We love the house.
Sometimes things don’t always go as planned. We had discovered the hard way that a laundry system like ours is not infallible. The washer drains into a utility sink which drains into a pump that lifts the water about 2 feet to the septic drain. The grey water passes right through the septic system and to two dry wells in the backyard and it is those dry wells that are subject to clogging full of lint over time. Natural fibers would break down over time, but considering most of the clothes we wear are synthetic blends of some sort, the lint then must be filtered or else risk an expensive (and I mean really expensive) re-digging of the dry wells.
Ok, no problem… filter the water coming out of the washer. Check. Secondary filter in the sink drain, check.
We learned the hard way that the sink drain filter was a bit finer and therefore needed attention more often so the basin spilled over a couple times. Only a minor mess to clean up.. that is until its not.
The 4th go around with this was a doozey. Someone didn’t clear the filter between loads and none of the water drained between loads so I’m estimating that 10ish gallons went on the floor. I don’t know if you know what 10 gallons looks like spilled on a floor, but its a lot of water. The laundry floor is unfinished concrete, so the water traveled quickly across that before it seeped under the walls i had built just a few months before and then under the new laminate flooring I had laid.
Kris called me in a panic at the office so I rushed home to to deal with the flood. She already had the shop vac trying to get as much up as possible. Everything in the laundry room had to move… washer, dryer, cabinets, storage, the clean and dirty clothes…. everything. Next the laundry room drywall was unzipped (thankfully there isn’t much) at about knee height. Then the flooring in Ryder’s playroom including the door trim and baseboard had to be lifted. Capillary action wicks the water great distances under the flooring so I had to lift quite a bit before I found dry flooring again. The pad underneath was made from recycled denim which once wet, did not want to dry. In hind sight, that’s a poor choice for a basement installation. I vacuumed everything possible to get standing water up. I had two dehumidifiers running 24/7 and fans set up to circulate as much air as possible. It took 3 straight days of all that whirring to dry things out and I finally got to re-lay the flooring. Thankfully I had extras that I could replace the soggy and warped flooring and most of the trim was salvageable.
As a fix for the overflow issue, I bought a large storage container and plumbed it into the sink as an overflow basin. That doesn’t necessarily “fix” the problem, but it should prevent an issue like this from happening again. Ugh.