About the House

After the floods from the tropical twins Irene and Lee, we knew the basement needed immediate and expensive waterproofing.

A second mortgage and a lot of jackhammering later, mission accomplished - no more would we have a water problem inside our house.

Now we have a water problem outside.

Seems the earth around my foundation - the same ground that would allow water to seep in through my basement walls and floors - is not particularly suited for drainage.

So now, after a heavy rain and/or snowmelt, the water that would have found its way into my basement ends up pooled up in my (and my neighbor's) yard.

The discharge from the sump pump, carried through a hard pipe to the top of a rise away from my foundation, is belched out through a pop-up drain in my yard and rolls down to a growing sinkhole that forms a lake at the front of my property.

If only I could coax it the rest of the way into the storm sewer that passes beneath the road surface, just feet from my lake.

But how?

Do I have to foot the bill to run a pipe directly into the municipal storm sewer? Is that even allowed? Or will they install a catch basin on the edge of my property? I'm in contact with city officials who promise to assess the situation, so I'm hopeful for a resolution soon.

In the meantime, I cringe every time I hear the pump click on and off -- every few seconds at the peak of a storm, then gradually tapering off to longer and longer intervals of quiet until it finally goes silent after a couple weeks of dry weather.

It's frustrating not knowing what to do with the water next - seems almost like the menacing pink blob in my daughter's favorite Dr. Seuss book, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back."

In the book, the ugly stain left in the bathtub is transferred from Mom's dress to Dad's shoes, across the walls, and eventually into the snow outside before ultimately being vaporized, courtesy of Little Cat Z, with some magical process or compound called Voom.

Yeah, that's what I need; just a little Voom.

 We moved into our house on April 4 of last year - after a particularly brutal winter already had begun giving way to warmer days and shorter nights.

 At that time, cooling was the principal climate-control concern. So after learning that the entire second-floor was wired on a single circuit, we had our electrician run dedicated lines into each bedroom to accommodate the air conditioners that we surely would need in the coming summer months.

 Our bedroom, we knew, would be the hottest since it faced due West, soaking in the brutal summer sun as it inched its way down the horizon on those endless July and August days. The air conditioner was a necessity for sure in our room, as well as in our guest room.

 Our daughter's room, while now wired for AC if necessary, stayed cool enough with just a window fan, thanks partly to a big maple tree blocking out most of the sun during the hottest part of the day.

 But come October, those first few freezing nights revealed a more troubling truth about her room: It was COLD in there. Opening the door to her bedroom in the mornings brought a rush of chilly air that was notably different than our bedroom just across the hall. It felt like you'd almost be able to see your breath.

 And when your 4-year-old daughter says "Daddy, it's too COLD in here," you darn well want to fix it - stat!

 A consultation with the plumber went nowhere. The system was working properly, he said, suggesting that I clean the baseboard fins and move the thermostat from the hallway to our bedroom as possible solutions.

 Done and done. But the next chilly morning, the thermometer I mounted in her room read 59 degrees - a full 7 degrees colder than in our bedroom just across the hall.

 How could this be? Before we bought the house last year, our home inspector remarked that our attic was rated at R-38 - more than adequate, he counseled.

 Perhaps by serendipity, a friend who also is a new homeowner told me recently about a state program that provides a home energy audit and pays 75 percent - up to $2,000 - of the cost of energy efficiency upgrades. Like adding insulation.

 Sign me up!

 What our auditor found was that, while the attic was indeed rated about R-38 for insulation, the fiberglass was pulled aside and stacked in a big pile - presumably by the electricians who had run the wires for the new circuits - directly above my daughter's room. Bingo.

 That was two weeks ago. The auditor spread the existing insulation out properly and completed his report, which recommended a host of upgrades, including air sealing and additional insulation. For a few hundred dollars, we'll surely take advantage of the opportunity to tighten up our home and hopefully make back our investment through savings on our utility bills, although it may take until spring to actually have the work performed.

 This morning, it was 2 degrees outside when we woke up. But my daughter's room was nice and toasty.

"Ah, the joys of homeownership." 

It's an oft-used phrase that I always took as pure sarcasm: "Sure sucks having to fix all that stuff when it breaks, huh?"

Indeed, as a longtime renter, that was my viewpoint. 

When the furnace winks out at 1 a.m. on a Sunday in January, I'd embrace that philosophy while calling for emergency repair service -- at premium, weekend rates. Or when the ice dams start leaking all the way down the walls and dripping through the basement ceiling tiles; I just have to move my stuff to keep it dry and let somebody else worry about the structure.

And all on somebody else's dime. 

But now it's my problem. And, as I've quickly come to realize, all those years of letting somebody else deal with home maintenance have left me fairly ill-equipped in the handyman department.

Sure, I can hang up a picture straight, maybe even use a drill to install an anchor in the drywall or apply a coat of paint. But anything more complicated presents a challenge. 

And the challenges have been mounting. Even something seemingly as simple as changing a light bulb can present obstacles, it seems. When the one of the kitchen pot lights blew, for instance, I couldn't find a way to access the bulb. The circa 1968 fixtures had been bent and twisted over time, and were reluctant to let the glass cover twist freely enough to move aside in its housing.

But after a little trial and error, I was able to figure out a way to remove the entire housing, which allowed me to realign the bent parts and replace the bulb. Plus, I figured out how the ceiling mount worked and was able to re-seat several more of the rickety fixtures so they were once again flush with the ceiling. 

Victory!

Then there was the downstairs toilet, whose handle finally dislodged after months of feeling like it was just too wiggly to be right. After turning off the water and opening up the tank, I was able to figure out how the mechanism worked and reattach the handle -- better than it ever had. 

The leaky upstairs tub, however, was another story. After noticing signs of water on the ceiling directly below the bathroom, I realized that the caulk around the tub had rotted completely through in places.

Feeling cocky from my pot light success, I started sniffing around on Google to learn how to re-caulk a tub. How hard could THAT be? Just squeeze out some more of that silicone goop over the trouble spots and you're good to go, right?

Wrong.

Seems you can't just patch caulk -- silicone won't stick to itself, it turns out. So faced with the frightening task of removing ALL the existing caulk and properly cleaning and drying the tile before attempting to re-seal the entire tub, I punted and called a pro. Maybe I could have handled it, but with water already seeping through to the downstairs ceiling, I was in no mood to test my skills.

Maybe someday. But for now, I'll feel the joy every time I flush that toilet.

It was a perfect hole, squarely in the center of the tile ceiling.

My eye went to it immediately as I plopped down for a frosty beverage and some TV after a busy night at work.

"That's odd," I thought. "I'm sure that wasn't there before."

A closer inspection confirmed my suspicion. On the rug directly beneath the hole was a small batch of sawdust. This was a fresh wound, all right.

My first thought was to my daughter and her babysitter. They play in that room -- and my daughter had just had a fairy birthday party. Perhaps this was the result of an errant wand gone awry. OK, so my 5-year-old probably couldn't reach the ceiling or toss something hard enough to make a hole, but the sitter's tall. Maybe the fairy play got a little out of hand.

Nope; they denied it.

That left only one other explanation: Critter.

So into the crawlspace I crawled -- and sure enough, there was scattered rodent feces strewn about a bed of gnarled insulation. And even more telling was the gaping hole left in the wall to the garage. Seems the electricians had drilled a large hole through which to run conduit last spring while wiring the upstairs with new circuits for the air conditioners.

And around that pipe was a hole large enough for not only the conduit pipe, but for a chilly critter to shimmy through and set up house in my crawlspace.

So after cleaning up the filth as best as i could and stuffing the hole with steel wool to block entry -- or exit, it was time to set the trap. (They love peanut butter.)

I also tethered the trap with a wire just in case the trap delivered a less-than-lethal blow: I learned this at my last rental house after a trap i had set in the garage went missing. Granted, I found it days later by following the smell, but I sure didn't want to have that happen in the walls behind my bedroom.

The next morning, I pulled back the bookcase blocking the entry to the crawlspace and BAM -- there he was; little brown mouse, guilty as charged.

After removing the carcass and resetting the trap, no sign that he had any company in there.

Now I just have to figure out how to patch the hole in my white, acoustic tile ceiling.

 As the water was still seeping through the floor last month during the second flood in as many weeks, my wife, Jackie ran a Web search for water heaters in a desperate bid to learn just how much water, if any, ours could handle on the OUTSIDE.

 Not much, we learned, so my constant wet/dry vacuuming was not for naught - I kept the water from pooling up enough to reach the bottom lip of the tank.

 And while doing her Web research, Jackie noticed an ad on the side of the the search page for a basement waterproofing company - apparently, the Google is very intuitive. So we called the number and talked to a nice man who actually answered the phone and seemed to know a lot about wet basements - and how to dry them.

 Determined not to ever go through this again, we had him come out and give us an estimate. Out he came, and after a walk through and around our home, he told us that for a tidy sum, he could install a system that he guaranteed would keep us dry.

 He showed us pictures of his work, told us about how he learned this business from his dad years ago, and now was working on jobs with his son. Over the years, he said, he's done thousands of basements, some much worse than ours, he assured us.

 A French drain system, he explained, would involve using a jackhammer to dig a deep trench around the perimeter of the basement floor (YIKES!). In the trench, he'd place a run of large pipe, perforated underneath to let in the water, which would flow into a professionally installed sump pump. The pump would then evacuate the water out of the house and through a pipe safely away from my foundation.

 A battery back-up would ensure that the pump would still kick on and run for up to two days in the event of a power outage. Gravel would be placed around the pipe, and new concrete would be poured to make the floor a floor again.

 That's great for the water seeping up through the floor; Not so much for the geysers that erupted in the wall behind my furnace, spouting water like blood from a pierced artery.

 For that, he said, they'd hand dig from the outside and seal the cracks with some high-test epoxy that he said they use on Navy ships, so I guess it must be good.

 While a little wary of the thousands of dollars it would cost, we were sold on the peace of mind that comes with a dry basement. Let's do it.

 Then came the obsessive Web research to make sure this was really the best option - it is - and that this is the best company to use - yup.

 The last few days have been a blur of moving storage boxes and tools and furniture from the perimeter of the basement to center. The jackhammers come tomorrow.

 The radar, like so many times this summer, was oozing with green and yellow blobs, inching their way through eastern New York and bearing down on the Berkshires

 The rain was coming. Again.

 The forecast for the coming days promised all manner of wetness: showers, scattered showers, intermittent showers, drizzle, fog, you name it. Which seemed oddly like last week - a dismal stretch of days that finally yielded to sunshine and unusual warmth for late September.

 Perfect grass-growing weather.

 And grow it has. The excessive amounts of rain this summer has been a boon for the grass-growing gods.

 At first, it was a pleasure getting out there with my new Toro, mulching my way across the half-acre of green landscape, 22-inch stripe by 22-inch stripe. Often, the job came in preparation for a social gathering, ensuring a crisp, neat look to the yard to show off to family and friends coming to check out our new digs.

 Nothing like welling up with the pride of ownership while sipping a cold one on the deck, flipping some burgers and lording over your land.

 But even as the endless days of summer have diminished and dusk backs dangerously close to dinnertime, the warm, rainy weather has kept the grass growing at a furious pace.

 And now, rather than a grooming experience, getting the grass cut is more like seizing upon a moment of opportunity. The recent sunny, breezy days have dried out the lawn nicely, even as it grows nearly fast enough to watch it happen.

 It's a window that's closing fast. With my daughter safely off to kindergarten and the morning dew swept away with the breeze, it's time to power up the mower.

 Under darkening skies, I raced the approaching front that promised to soak my fresh handiwork, mocking my futile bid to control the uncontrollable. With a final, gratifying stripe, I wrapped up the job in just over an hour and safely rolled the mower back up the still-dry pavement of my driveway and parked it in the garage.

 I beat the rain. I even had time to fire up the grill for lunch before the showers arrived.

 They told us there'd be water in the basement.

 Mostly during the spring snowmelt, they said, and after a really heavy rainfall. I guess the double slam of Tropical Storm Irene and the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee qualify.

 But on the morning of Irene, we breathed a sigh of relief to find the basement bone dry after a night of pounding rain, which had turned the nearby brook into a raging rapids, spilling over the road and forcing me to take a detour to work.

 But after being at work barely half an hour, the call came from my wife, Jackie: A circuit blew in the house and wouldn't reset, the sump was overflowing and water was gushing through a hole in the foundation wall and seeping up through the floor.

 Darting back home through the desolate streets of Pittsfield, I found the road was already passable and the rains had largely subsided. Inside, the power was back, the pump was catching up with the flow of water and the gusher was down to a trickle, making its way harmlessly into the sump pump. The pump, it seems, is on the same circuit as the dehumidifier, and both working overtime was too much to handle.

 I unplugged the dehumidifier: easy call.

 With the seepage slowing and pump pumping, I left it in Jackie's capable hands and headed back to work - crisis averted.

 Fast forward about a week to Labor Day. With the ground still saturated from Irene's soaking, I watched all day as driving rain pelted our windows and swelled the brook anew. First thing Tuesday, with a break in the action but an ominous radar picture looming, we hit the Home Depot for a wet/dry vac to replace the rug shampooer that the previous owners left for mopping up the leaks.

 Then came the deluge.

 We awoke Wednesday morning to the brook again over the road - and lapping into our driveway. It was worse than Irene - and it was still pouring.

 In the basement, the gusher was gushing, the floor was seeping, and the pump was working overtime. (Fortunately, I had the foresight to unplug the dehumidifier in anticipation.)

 This time was much more serious: So great was the force behind the geyser in the wall that I had to put down a bucket to catch the water, which was endangering the nearby boiler. And the seepage was flowing constantly, pooling up against the corner of a small divider designed to steer the water into the sump and threatening to swamp our water heater.

 At least the rain was subsiding, so I knew based on the Irene example that things would calm down quickly. Indeed, the gushing turned to a trickle and the level on the sump pump subsided from the brink of overflowing. But the seepage kept coming. And coming. And coming.

 For six hours, I sucked up the water as fast as it came in -- 6 gallons at a time. I rushed the full canister upstairs to dump it down the driveway, then back down I went to catch the rising water before it reached the water heater.

 In the seventh hour and on the verge of a meltdown, desperation inspired a solution: I punched a hole in the floor when the water was pooling so it would drain into the subfloor and reach the pump on its own, harmlessly bypassing the water heater en route.

 Wish I'd thought of that in the third or fourth or fifth hours.

  It took only a few days for the little green weed sprouts to poke their annoying little heads out through the tired red mulch.

 My aching back and wrist had just recovered from the previous weekend's weed-pulling binge, and there was clearly no time to wait - new mulch needed to be applied to the beds post haste.

 My friend and landscape consultant Dave had recommended 4 to 5 yards of mulch would be needed to amply cover the numerous beds and tree rings around our property. But I knew I had to get this done in one weekend lest I risk leaving a massive brown pile to destroy the lawn and become a soggy eyesore in my new neighborhood. No, I couldn't possibly tackle a pile that big in one weekend.

 So I went with 3 yards, figuring I'd at least take care of the front - the part people can see.

 I spread out some tarps on the front corner of my lot just in time for the garden center truck to arrive and drop its load squarely in the center. I was so ready - I even had taken the wheel off the wheelbarrow and filled it with 75 cents worth of air at a nearby gas station.

 What I didn't have was a shovel.

 Back at the hardware store, I realized that I had never actually bought a shovel that wasn't made for snow. The choices being a 'digging' shovel or a 'transfer' shovel, it was an easy call. But there also were choices for handle style: A short one with a nice metal handle at the end or a long wooden one with no handle -- same price for either.

 After playing make-believe in Aisle 2 with both, I shrugged and settled on the one with the handle and got to work.

 While my wife, Jackie, re-dug the borders around the beds with our new edging tool, I scooped shovelful after shovelful off the pile and into the wheelbarrow and topped off the tired red beds with a thick coat of fresh brown pine. I learned early on that if you aren't careful while spreading, that red stuff finds its way up to the surface really easily, so we had to be extra careful to not stir up the bottom layer.

 And after two beautiful sunny days, just a half an hour before starting my work week on Sunday night, I made the final transfer with my new shovel.

 Nice.

 When you're house-hunting, it's easy to fall in love with the pictures included with the listings.

 It's an acquired skill for Realtors, apparently, to learn how to take photos that make even the most mundane little shack seem like a palace. Several times, we were wowed by the listing photos only to discover that somehow the lens had added 10 feet to the living room or made the yard seem like a golf course.

 The house we settled on had great curb appeal right from the start; lush, healthy grass, lots of trees and privacy, and of course, that deep red mulch around all the beds. Oh, that mulch can really pull you in - it just makes you feel like everything is tidy and in its perfect order.

 That is, until the springtime and the weeds start popping through.

 Seems the mulch that added so much curb appeal, alas, was only skin deep. And that surface dressing was no match for the onslaught of dandelion and other weeds that surged through the moist red chips, drinking in the April showers and flourishing in the occasional sunshine.

 Suddenly, it looked like a tenement house, overgrown and unkempt.

 So I spent last weekend on my knees or hunched over, whacking at the ground with my three-pronged fork tool thing while yanking out dandelion and crabgrass that had rooted deep beneath the mulched façade.

 I'm told by a friend, who was kind enough to consult with me on the matter, that for mulch to be effective at stopping weeds, it needs to be 2 to 3 inches deep. So this week, we'll have the garden center drop off a couple yards of the stuff and I'll top off the beds so they stay weed-free.

 My back and hand may be aching, but I've got to say: that curb appeal is back -- at least for now.

So apparently, my house was built on a swamp.

 At least that's what I'm told by my neighbors, usually through gritted teeth - I guess their houses were built on a swamp, too. Not that this comes as a surprise - we're at the bottom of a steep hill with a brook running under the road just two houses away.

 The seller's agent even boasted to us that the house WASN'T in the flood plain - she knew that because there was a battle over that fact at some point, and she proudly produced a FEMA document stating with federal government certainty that, in fact, the house was at least several inches higher than the flood plain.

 OK, so the basement floods every year during the spring snowmelt season, but that's what sump pumps are for. So far, we've actually been high and dry through many a spring downpour, so I'm feeling more confident that we'll stay mostly dry down there. Maybe we CAN finish it, someday.

 But there are other reminders of the less-than-solid ground beneath our foundation, not the least of which are the somewhat alarming cracks in the structure from "settling." The home inspector and others have assured us that the house, built in the late 60s, should be adequately settled by now. So for now, I'll assume they're right and I'll write off the structural quirks as "charm."

 I'm reminded of this charm every night after I put my daughter to bed and notice that the walk out of her room is distinctly uphill. I'm also reminded when I try to shut the door to the upstairs hallway - any upstairs door, actually. Seems the settling was significant enough over the years that every upstairs doorway is out of whack -- to the extent that some won't latch anymore because the latch isn't even close to lining up with the strike plate on the door jamb.

 Enter my dad, who spent the past weekend here powering through a laundry list of little projects around to house. Among other things, he helped me get the screen in the front door, drilled holes in the bathroom tile for the toilet paper bar and fixed the doors - four of them. By fix, I mean he managed to reposition the strike plates on the upstairs doors so they line up again and actually latch. (Thanks, Dad!)

 So while the walk from my daughter's bed to the doorway still has that uphill feel to it, at least the door now latches - even if it is far from straight.

 Charming.