Progress Report

As I woke up this morning, my nose reminded me of the events of two days ago. Our house smells like a locker room. Ick.

We've got several fans running down in the basement and two dehumidifiers, as well as the air conditioner.


It would be nice if we could open the windows to help air things out, but here's the weather report for today:

We're not going to rule out a clap of thunder or some areas of heavy rain but the big story today is going to be the oppressive heat and humidity. Temperatures will soar quickly into the lower 90s with dew points in the 70s. (Anything over 65 degrees is considered uncomfortable). We will continue to see humidity in the area through Saturday morning. A western front will take its time getting here and it looks like thunderstorms will linger into Saturday morning with humidities dropping by Sunday. The cooldown won't last long with temperatures up towards 90 degrees by the middle of the week.

The thought has occurred to me more than once that I'm glad this wasn't 100 years ago. I can't even imagine what people would have done to deal with this.



Yesterday, Kara and I went out to see the water levels immediately surrounding our area. Within the mile around our house, three roads were closed due to high water, and that didn't count the high water in front of our house.

Our house is the two-story gray one you can see peeking through the trees. The road has a dip here and the water level was about 12-15 inches at this point.

This is our neighbor's house and barn, just to our north. The 'lake' is the front yard of another neighbor.

This is county road 60, looking east towards Wayne Trace High School. School had started on Tuesday and this is one of the major routes the buses take. Not yesterday.

This is south of our house and there is a road that runs right through the middle of the picture under all that water. You can see by the debris laying in the road that the water was even higher.

The postmaster called and wanted to know if the rural carrier could make it through right in front of our house. Kara and I had made it through there, so I told her yes, but she'd have to come in from the north instead of the south as she usually does. Then our trash service called to tell us there would be no trash pick-up this week. There were too many roads closed in our area, so they weren't running their routes.

On the news last night, there was video footage of flooding in Findlay, which is an hour east of us and also of Van Wert, just ten miles south. Van Wert County has been declared a disaster area, making residents eligible for some state disaster aid. Paulding County was not included in the nine counties he mentioned, but unfortunately the flooding didn't magically stop at the county line, which is just three miles south of us. The postmaster had told me that some Haviland residents had water as high as their armpits in their homes. Our little corner of the state also made the national news.

I'm still irritated that our standard homeowner's policy doesn't cover our damage. I can understand it not covering anything had we not had preventive measures in place, but we did. The sump pump failed, and the flooding was a result of that. Like I said before, we've lived here thirty years and even though we'd certainly had many rains capable of causing our basement to flood, this is the first time it did - due to equipment failure. <>

We haven't decided whether or not to replace the pad under the carpeting in the family room. As we rolled out the carpeting to let it dry and walked over it, we didn't find it objectionable without the padding. We've had the pad rolled out in the driveway to let the sun dry it out, just in case we decide to put it back down. Once the carpeting is dry, we'll need to have a carpet layer come in and restretch it and fasten it down.

Outside, the waters have receded and in good garden news, we never had water laying in the flower beds. This was encouraging to me, because prior to this summer, we had several low areas that always had big puddles following a rain like this. All summer, I'd put any extra soil we had into these low areas and finally they're at a high enough level not to hold water.

Yesterday's mail had brought the solar fountain I'd bought on eBay, so I got that installed. Easy peasy and it works very well! It's one that stores solar energy so that it will still work even when the sun isn't directly shining on it. It's also got three different fountain heads for three different looks.


I continued to do laundry and got that done (I think). There isn't a single room in the house that doesn't have stuff sitting in it that doesn't belong there. That, I can deal with. The most annoying thing right now is the smell. I look forward to getting things dried out and things back to normal. This too shall pass, but it's going to be awhile.