Man the pumps!

Updated Tuesday morning.

Still raining.

Got up early this morning, downed a pot of coffee for fortification, dressed myself in my boots and foulweather gear, and went downstairs to thwart our basement in one of its semi-annual attempts to turn itself into an indoor koi pond.

Hope you were out of the path of the Nor'easter or that it left you and yours unscathed.  And I hope those of you who live outside the Northeast don't blame those of us who live thisaway for the panicky, apocalyptic coverage the Media tends to give to even the possibility it might snow on New York City.  A little Manhattan-centric, you think?  If the Media seems to be paying more attention to global warming and climate change lately, it's probably because the powers that be at the networks have come to understand, vaguely, that if the ice caps melt Battery Park might be underwater.

Nance has their number.  Of course, she lives in Detroit where for eight months out of the year "bad weather" is just a synonym for "the view outside my window at this particular moment."  People from her neck of the woods, sez Nance, are made of sterner stuff.

when the northeast is hit by some wussy little snowstorm, inconveniencing Wall Street Masters of the Universe and, more important, scores of network-TV reporters, so that the storm leads all the newscasts — Big Apple paralyzed! Capital socked in! — the rest of the country just rolls its eyes. That weather system is moving up from the southwest; we’re told that by day’s end we could experience snow, sleet and possibly a thunderstorm. It’s snowing now, hard. I’m reminded of a line from “Polar Star,” Martin Cruz Smith’s great murder mystery set, no kidding, on a factory ship off the coast of Alaska: “Come. Enjoy the refreshing Bering weather.”

Storm really was pretty fierce, depending on where you live.  We missed the brunt of it here in Mayberry. Rain, like I said.  Two inches of water in the basement.  There'd be less, might even be none, if our sump pump wasn't set at the highest and driest point down there.

Mostly what I was doing all morning was using a push broom to encourage the water to flow uphill.

This is a 67 year old house and the reason the pump's in the absolutely wrong spot to do any real good is probably that the foundation's settled unevenly over time.  But I am not the least bit philosophical or pragmatic about anything that goes wrong with this house.

I blame the house as if it created problems in itself just to get at me.

I know I've written about this before.  A previous owner was a self-taught do-it-yourself-er who took on projects, large and small, in apparently experimental moods.  "Let's see if I can actually do plumbing," I hear him saying to himself.  "How hard can it be to install a new bath tub?"

No matter what job he took on, in the middle of it he got either creative or lazy or frustrated, and the result was that nothing quite works the way it should.  And whenever we've called in repairmen they always begin by saying the exact same thing:

"Well, that's weird."

Since the handyman owner went to the great Home Depot in the sky years before we moved in, I can't bring myself to hate him.  So I hate the house in his stead.  This hurts the blonde's feelings.  She loves the place and can't understand why I don't love it too.

"Because it's a demon house," I tell her.

"It is not," she says quickly, with a tone that says Shhh, the house will hear you, as if it's a sensitive child who knows we're looking over his less than stellar report card.  "It's not a demon house.  It's a lovely little house."

"It's a demon house," I say and stalk off, aiming at my tool chest or the Yellow Pages to look up the number for the plumber, electrician, roofer, glazier, mason, or chimney sweep, depending.

It is a demon house.  I'm convinced the reason it and I were brought together was to make me hate myself for being a less than competent handyman and for not being rich.  I'm just a putterer and tinkerer.  A real handyman would look at each new disaster as a challenge and an opportunity.  And if I was rich I'd have had the plumber, the electrician, the roofer, the glazier, the mason, and the chimney sweep in here all at once to undo all that DIY owner done did.

This should be filed under "Count Your Blessings."

There are people who don't own their own house to complain about.  There are people with sub-prime mortgages the bottom of whose lives are about to drop out on them.  There are people who used to own homes in New Orleans and Biloxi who will never get them back.

What's a little water in the basement?  A couple more hours down there with the push broom and the wet-vac and we'll be fine again until next spring.

I should call somebody, though.  Should have someone in to move the sump pump and find where the water's coming in and seal it up.

I'm afraid though.

I'm sure that if I call someone in the first thing he'll say when he goes downstairs and looks around will be, "Well, this is weird."

_________________________________

Speaking of Global Warming:  Longtime Mannionville commenter Kit Stolz regularly does, on his blog A Change in the Wind.

Journalist Andrew Revkin, who reports on the environment for the New York Times, was at a local library over the weekend.  Revkin says the toughest audience for his stories on global warming is his editors.

In Europe, said Revkin, and in the scientific community, the idea that man is contributing to the pace of warming the planet is accepted fact.

Here, though, much news coverage presents global warming — and human contribution to it — as still up for debate. And news outlets dutifully find "equal and opposite Ph.D.s" for each side.

"That's fine for 90 percent of the stories we report on," said Revkin. "But it's perpetuating the sense in readers' minds that (climate change) is a big shouting match."

Revkin has a book about his visits to the North Pole in the company of climatologists and oceanographers looking at the effects of global warming on the ice cap, The North Pole Was Here:  Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World.

Rain's let up.  Our basement is drying out.  Lots of basements nearby, lots of houses, streets, neighborhoods, and towns are still underwater.

Comments

[Linkmeister]

Long about 25 years ago we had an electrician look for something in the kitchen; his remark was "Lady, whoever wired this house was drunk."

[House]

I heard that Lance.

Not only did I hear that, I read that. Yes, a house can read a blog. I know what you think of me and just to let you know, the feeling is mutual. Don't be surprised if when you wake up tomorrow morning, you find the sump pump in your bedroom. Moowahahaha!!!!

[billy pilgrim]

Pshaw.

Competence be damned. Nothing a good enthusiastic demolition effort can't resolve.

At least, that's my approach, and I refuse to take any responsibility for the number of household projects that stall almost immediately after the demolition phase.....

Just look at it this way: If you mess something up, you just get to start on another demo project! Get the Sawzall!!

[grasshopper]

An important detail here, Lance: When you call a plumber, electrician, etc., research his or her reputation first. Hiring a DIY person can end up costing you a lot more than just doing-it-yourself from a text book. You'd be surprised how many otherwise out of work folks really believe that if they know car engines, why not basement waterproofing? Or sewing, why not electricity? If they've caulked their bathtubs, how hard can it be to install toilets and sinks? Sad to say, I've been there, hired countless fly-by-nights, and paid the price.

[KC45s]

The greenest I have ever been was the day my dad and I hauled soaked carpeting out of his flooded basement. It struck me as disquieting that mere water leached the dye out of the carpeting enough to destroy our clothes and give us a marbled green skin tone that would not wash out. The real tragedy, however, was my childhood comic book collection was in the basement. And newsprint reacts so poorly with water. Had I not been worried about the water's composition--let's just say Dad lives downstream from steel mills--I might have wept.

Tell that house who is boss, Lance. Unless the walls bleed or something. Then, try to reach a compromise.

[Kevin Wolf]

No panic here at the condo, though the nor'easter hit us square on, and we've got a few more wet days ahead. They say next weekend will be mild, but this is New England so I'll wait and see.

[Campaspe]

I am sending this post to my mother. She grew up in a house with another Mr. Fixit with delusions of competence. With the result that the self-installed plumbing in her childhood home is, shall we say, eccentric to this day.

[mac macgillicuddy]

Oh, go ahead, call the pump guy. Think about Norm on This Old House. His first response to everything is always, "That's a big job," or "That's never going to work," and then he makes short work of it. Scotty used to do this, too, on Star Trek (or maybe I mean, Scotty WILL do this, too, since Star Trek won't happen until the future gets here when, obviously, handy men and specialists of all kinds will still be of the same humor). It's all part of setting oneself up as the miracle workers they already seem to be to us DIYNers (that's Do-It-Yourself-Not!ers).

So call the pump guy; let him say, "That's weird." It would be weirder if he didn't say it.