Big Snow + Sun = Water (Part 1)

Big snow in the spring usually means big melting when the sun comes out (which is usually the very next day around here)! And that’s what happened back in April, 2016. Spring snow is normal for Colorado. Spring snow is also usually really wet and heavy, unlike the light, powdery stuff we get in the winter months. This particular spring snow caught us a bit off guard however. It was evidently bigger than normal (our neighbors assured us!) Being the newbies on the block, we had wondered if this was a regular spring occurrence so the neighbors’ assurance was comforting!

Shortly after this storm, our son Brandyn came to help with the renovation for a few days (read about that visit here). At the end of his stay, we took him to the airport for his flight back to Texas. Warren and I had been working on the house non-stop up until then. We had taken little to no time to do anything else during those first few months that we owned the house. That day however, we decided to take a leisurely and scenic drive home from the airport. We even got out of the car to spend some time by a river along the way! You know, just took our time returning home. Big mistake!

And Then There Was That 2nd River!

When we got back into our neighborhood, we noticed that the warm, sunny afternoon had rapidly begun to melt the remaining snow. As we approached our house, we crossed a large “river” running across the road and down onto our property and directly towards our house! Warren jumped out, grabbed a shovel from the garage, and began frantically digging trenches to divert the water away from the house. The ground around the house was already saturated from the normal melt-off in the previous days. And now there was standing water all around our house!

Crisis Diverted!

While Warren had started the trenching, I ran down to the basement to check and make sure none of the water had made its way into the house. We were in luck (for now), no signs of water! So I went out with a second shovel to help Warren dig the remaining trenches.

Basements Are Great For DRY Storage!

Within about an hour of our trenching, we had created a lovely little seasonal stream running across the property and well away from the house. Mission accomplished! Or was it? It was about that time that I decided to check on the house again. And there it was, the dreaded flooded basement scenario!

Sadly, just days before, Warren and I had moved everything that was on the main floor of the house (unpacked boxes, supplies, furniture, etc.) down to the basement in preparation for laying the wood flooring on the main level.

I ran to get Warren and we began grabbing all of the items that we had just moved down to the basement days before. Up and down the basement stairs we went. We had so much stuff stored down there and hadn’t had a chance to build shelving yet, so everything had to get up and off of the floor. We called our daughter Caitlin to come and help schlep stuff upstairs into the wee hours of the morning. And where’s Brandyn? He missed all of the fun by just a few hours!

Big Snow For One Day; Water For Days Weeks

Water continued to seep into the basement through cracks and an opening in the foundation (where the rough-in plumbing existed for a planned bathroom that had never been added) at a pretty quick rate and we couldn’t figure out how to stop it. It took a day or so, a sump pump, a chance glance at the blueprints for the house, and some more digging to eventually resolve the problem.

The blueprints revealed an installation of weeping tiles (buried drainage) on both sides of the house. Warren began to search (dig) and he found them! Both drainage pipes were crushed, and therefore blocked, and therefore no longer doing their job! The water had nowhere to go but get sucked up into our basement by the pressure created from within the house. Mystery solved! Once the drain lines were fixed, water began to flow and it flowed for, I’m not kidding you, weeks! Yay! No more wet basement but isn’t water a truly amazing force of nature?

• 

• 

That was just the first surprise relating to snow and melting snow and water in the spring of 2016! The next surprise was just around the corner for us. I’ll share those details in my next post; see you then!

Blessings,
{Shelley}