After a festive and ridiculously good time at DC's Caribbean Carnival celebrations this weekend, I took Sunday to rest and relax... and of course... watch the rain. The forecasters had predicted a weekend of rain and discomfort, but Friday came... no rain... Saturday came... no rain... but last night... the rain cometh.
It was an awesome sight. Sheets of rain falling for hours and hours... The news media were having difficulty broadcasting because their stations were flooding... trees were falling... mudslides.... rivers flooding their banks.
And then the morning came, and with it came the realization that there was water on the first floor of the house. The first floor of the house is a split level... 1/3 above grade, 2/3 below grade. The 2/3 did not fair very well with the torrential downpour. I fear that something like this would happen. My third year Site Engineering professor would always remind me that when dealing with water and buildings... good fences make good neighbors. If you forget this... the water may come knocking on your door to borrow some sugar more times than you care to endure.
So nostalgic analogies aside, I have a water problem.
What bothers me the most is that I think I might have created this problem. Main reason
I believe that the main source of the water (based on the pooling pattern) is directly adjacent to the new gutter line that comes off of the roof. That's nearly 6 inches of rain over 5 squares of roof (each square is 10'X10') overnight.
That’s a lot of water to come down one gutter right at the corner of the house.
I knew the gutter needed to be routed away from the house, but you just get so caught up in other things that seem to be more pressing until it demands your attention. That’s life... well... that has been my life... putting out fires.
It seems ironic that this fire is actually water.