The Great Flood of 2010

A couple of weekends ago we were watching a movie in our living room when I decided to finally get up and grade some papers before school the next morning. I thought that it was odd that I was suddenly standing in water so we looked around and apparently the washing machine (that was here when we moved in and had given us no problems until this point) had been spouting water uncontrollably for the better part of an hour! There was about 1/2 inch of water in almost every room in the house! We immediately turned the water off and tried to figure out how to get it cleaned up. To make a long story short, we bought a 1.5 gallon Shop-Vac which we had to empty every minute. We returned to the store and bought the 12 gallon one which was easily filled pretty quickly several times. All of our old towels were ruined and when we finally gave up at about 1:30 a.m., 5 hours after we had begun, we planned for Joe to stay home the following day to get it all figured out.

Since we are renting this house and the washing machine belongs to our landlord, his insurance is paying for everything. All of the flooring in the house, except for our bedroom and the ceramic tile in the entry way and kitchen, was ripped up immediately the next day. For 4 days we had about 20 commercial fans and 3 huge dehumidifiers running constantly. We literally had to yell to talk to each other. Needless to say, we spent each of the next several nights at Starbucks doing work until it was time for bed. The dehumidifiers gave off hot air which meant that our house stayed at a steady 83 degrees! If it hadn't been so loud, I would have been very comfortable! Our bedroom stayed closed off from some of the noise and all of the heat which meant that it was freezing at night (well, freezing for Baytown - 60 degrees or so). Anyway, almost 2 weeks later, we are still living on cement floors. Our stuff is everywhere, stashed wherever we could put it, and it has been hard to clean as we know that the new flooring will be going in eventually - hopefully sooner rather than later.

We have been trying to roll with the punches as we know that things could be a lot worse and we are so thankful for what we have. Please pray for us though as we continue to deal with the unexpected costs, etc.

The scene of the crime - the laundry room.
Isn't that the biggest dehumidifier you have ever seen (the tall machine on the left)?
It was at least 90 degrees in this little room!

Fans were EVERYWHERE!
They were all pointed at walls to try to dry them out. Some of the walls had water 8 inches high!

Our house was a wind tunnel. We are so glad that these are gone.