Doris - You're smart to use tubs for water. That was quick thinking.

Our basement flooded this spring when we got heavy rains. My husband called me in a panic and said the sump pump had quit working and the water was coming in fast. We contacted a plumber who said he would drive to Lowe's, buy another sump pump and come out and install it for us, so he did that while my hubby frantically tried to suck water out of our basement with a shop vac and carry it outside 5 gallons at a time. I came home used every blanket and towel we own to soak up water to try to keep it away from the carpeted areas. It almost worked. We only had to re-carpet one bedroom of the two that are downstairs. Most of our basement is tile so that was ok. There were lots of things that got wet and I had to do a LOT of extra laundry to wash all those towels and blankets when we were done.

I was trying to think of a way to use the shop vac as a continuous pump instead of having to stop and dump it each time. That would've helped and I didn't think of dumping it into something like tubs. We probably could've set up the kids old swimming pool in the middle of the floor.

Anyway - A big hug for you for having to go through all that. It's no fun. Wet carpet is heavy isn't it!

Wow Doris - That's a LOT of water! Glad to hear that you didn't have any major issues.

Do you need any seeds? I notice on your trade list that you want some things that I have. Take a look at my trade list and let me know.

Thanks!
Diana

Wow! Here I am peeved that WE don't have any rain in the forecast. Feast or famine anymore.

Diana, you're very sweet to offer seeds. Luckily, my seeds were high and dry and I really dont need anymore. I might even do a "flood survival SASE" when I get done.....

Hoover up there prolly does a quart or two max at a time, I WISH I had a shop vac... :) They were all out a Lowes yesterday, wonder why....

Wow! That's a lot of rain! I'm glad you didn't have too much of loss. That was very smart of you to think of storing the water.
Remy

Wow. Just wow. I cannot imagine that kind of water being around our home. Tons of snow, yes, but not water like that.

Glad you came through fine, and thanks for pointing out the advantage to having an unfinished basement. :O)

Wow Doris! I am so glad you guys got through this with very little lost. You and your family are proof,when you pull together anything can be accomplished,in your case saved from saturation! Thanks for sharing your experience,I am sure someone else will benefit from your quick thinking! :)

Had a similar situation with a very wet November, and an underground stream running under our rec room. Shop vac saved the day, sucking up the water, then dropping a submersible pump into the shop vac to pump the water off via a garden hose into our sump well.
Someone else is renting that house now..hope they're ok.

Doris, glad to hear that you were able to save most of your basement items.
Wow, that water is so high. Amazing and heartening to know that one can fight a flood and win (mostly).

When we moved to this house we had a multible-day rain storm and water was coming into the basement from one corner. Throughout the first night I used lots of towels and a sponge mop to keep the pulled back carpet from getting soaked. Early the next day DH got a shop vac which was a great help.

Hope your hands and elbows are okay. After all that wringing out my hands were sore for days and I got tennis elbow.

"then dropping a submersible pump into the shop vac to pump the water off via a garden hose into our sump well."

Wendy, Im typing that in my "Flood Survival Plan".

I didnt tell you guys about the sandbagging. They dumped a loan of sand and bags on the corner and we had to go bag our own. (Like at Costco). Anyway both mykids were out there bagging sand and we all took turns either dragging them back in the kids wagon or in the borrowed wheelbarrow.
Em could only pull one at a time in the wagon, but everything helps, right?

Some of the kids in the neighborhood came to our block riding their floaty things in the water like its a pool (My neighbor yelled at em, he's a junior high teacher).

Wow, Doris, so sorry you had to go through that. Glad you didn't lose much. I notice you have a washing machine there, but it's front-opening. Several years ago my mom's house got flooded and her sump pump stopped working. We used the washing machine (a top opener) to dump the shop vac water into and then basically used the drain cycle on the washer to get rid of it. That worked great.

We used to have a finished basement many (20+) years ago, but one sump pump failure while we were away on vacation cured us of that. We ripped everything out and have never replaced it.

So glad you saved everything. Our pumps (4) could not keep up either, so hubby changed them all out for new ones. We sucked up about 50 gallons with out shop vac. We also use plain white flour to create a dam. It works good, but you need to clean it up as soon as things dry out, or else it starts to grow mold & smell. Our creek is still really high, and we have a few small puddles everyday, but thankfully not in the finished part of the basement. We got 11" from Saturday am to Sunday night. Glad it wasn't snow!
Maggie

Im loving the flood tips everybody has. :)

"We used the washing machine (a top opener) to dump the shop vac water "
I could have done that two weeks ago, we just replaced the top loader. Great idea tho, I would have had to argue with hubby over it, he'd have mold anxiety and would have made me throw it out afterwards.

"plain white flour to create a dam"

Was that inside or outside? Does it work well, better than sand? Im going to keep four sandbags in the crawl so I can be ready to cover the drain openings in a flash.

Man alive, who would think that 4 sumps couldnt keep up? What horsepower were they? Im going to started looked at the 1 HP, I think both of mine are 1/2 or 3/4, they kept up until the very peak and then luckily the crawl is deep enough. After a couple hours they caught up again.

Doris, The flour was inside. We've never used sand down there, so I don't know if it would work better. Our neighbor use to work at a large bakery, and he said when they washed machinery down they would make a circle of flour around the machine to contain the water. So we tried it, and it works really well. But, you do need to clean it up fairly quick, or it molds & smells horrible. Our pumps are 1/2 HP. We have 2 pits, and the pumps are "piggybacked", one on top of the other. If the bottom one fails (which they both did), then the top one kicks in. Our pits have water trickling in at all times, even when it's bone dry out. They normally kick on about 6 times a minute. With this rain they were on continually, and the older ones burned out really fast. We also get water seeping up in several spots where the gravel is clogged in our french drain system.
Maggie

Another tip for those of us who only very occasionally get water in our basements (mine's unfinished, cement, but my elec furnace back up to my heat pump is down there, as well as my hot water tank and freezer)...

I don't have a sump, rarely have enough water that a shop vac cannot handle (no laundry equipment down there but there are big deep laundry sinks to empty into), but on those occasions far apart where I can accumulate some water in the middle of a storm....pond pump. I picked up a little circulating water feature pump for about $40 that will suck water at 1/4". Attach my 8'length of garden hose to it and empty into the laundry sinks, it dries things up in a big hurry. I took the pump out of my SIL's pond one Fall storm, then bought my own later when I found a good price so I didn't have to go back and wade in the rain for hers :)

Yes, pond pumps come in handy! We use one when we are changing the pumps out in the sump pits. They fill up in about 5 minutes, during normal conditions. Usually when we have to change them, it is after a heavy rain, and they fill up in about 2 minutes. It takes a little longer than 2 minutes to swap out pumps, so during the procedure we use a pond pump to empty the pit into a large tub. When the new pump is in, we move the pond pump over to the tub & pump it back into the pit. It's a PITA!

I also have pump for the pond when I need to change water there I just pump it out into the garden. My house has this overhead "sum pump" system while it is regular deep basement piping is almost close to the ceiling. I do not understand mechanics but it has never ever failed even that area where I live is built on wetlands. My community also had to use special reservoirs system that they did not use in last 30 years. Water was gone within an hour after opening them still I noticed lots of stuff thrown out by many houses so it seems my system is not something every house has. My flower beds did suffer some as soil got washed out near the road specially where root system was not strong due to plants being newly planted.

Our sump pump went down when we lost electricity, so I took all of the pails that cat litter comes in that I had saved (do not ask why, I wasn't sure either) but I filled about 20 of them and saved the basement from getting wet.

Connie you saved them for winter sowing,you just didnt know it at the time!:)
My best friend had quite a collection of them also ( she also had no idea why),it was good for me when I discovered this forum!;)

A submersible pump! Yes! That's what we needed last weekend. We have no sump pump in our basement and were doing the shop-vac and towel routine all morning and into the afternoon. At times, we couldn't quite keep up with the water coming in and five gallons of water isn't easy to lift up the step and over the back door-sill. A pump would have been great! And we really do need to change the water and clean out the fish pond. Now I have a good excuse for investing in the equipment.

It's nice to hear everyone's solutions. Will make a big difference when November's rains hit!

Diana Lynn

Hi Agirlsgirl,
How many inches of soil do I need in the bottom of a cat litter bucket??
Do I need bottom drain and side drain holes.
Have you used buckets like this for winter sowing?
Connie

WOW doris!! that is so smart!! i would NEVER have thought of that!!! last year when we had so much rain our basement flooded, the terrible thing was that just that spring i put everything from the attick (which it was safe) down to the basement, now i must mention that in the basement its like 5x8x6height. its a very small basement. well in the summer for some reason it flooded here, we are on a slope so we didn't get anything, just the creeks got so bad that they blocked us in town. funny!! . till a month later i went to the basement looking for something and OMGoodness i noticed that it had rings that would have been up to my neck on some of the crates, (thank goodness we were smart enough to get them switched over befor we put them there!! ) we lost alot of things, books from our youth, some of tabors baby books, some of tabors baby blankets, some of tabors baby clothes, some of our (i think my grandma's blanket she made she passed on ages ago) so you get the pic. so we had to clean that thing out big time!! all them crates, and then up went the crates AGAIN!!!! LOL i could NOT get that horrible smell out of the stuff either so they had to go!!
wish i had known, but we thought our house was sound for some reason, dont know why??!!
no sump pump. that would have been nice!! LOL ~Medo