I love my basement. Having grown up in Florida, the concept of a basement was foreign to me when I moved to Boston for the first time in 2002. It’s an extra floor of the house which typically is a great place for storage and when finished, can be a great location for a workshop, gym, play area or additional bedrooms. How about dirty shoes or grandma’s cat?
Basements also contain risks: like flooding, sneaky kids, and strange animals.
I learned about the risks the hard way when I went on vacation, returned home, and decided to jump on my peloton for a late Friday afternoon workout. When I opened the door to the basement, it looked like someone had left a yellow screen on the bottom of the stairs. Strange, I thought. As I descended the stairs, it started to dawn on me that something was amiss. I soon realized that the yellow screen was dirty water about two feet high in my basement. Two feet.
I was the opposite of Proactive. It was a Friday afternoon and I was panicking.
I called my contractor and it went to voicemail. My wife was unavailable. When this happens, your thought-process gets cloudy and your focus disappears. I couldn’t think rationally. I googled basement clean-up and companies popped up. I didn’t know which way to turn.
Luckily my contractor called back and said he was on his way. Four hours later we were making progress and after a trip to Lowe’s for fans and dehumidifiers, I was in bed by midnight with everything in the yard and the water extracted.
The next day was gut-wrenching. I lost my peloton, priceless framed posters, and family heirlooms so sacred that I can’t bear typing it out.
What did I learn?
- Make sure your sump pumps are working
- Have a back-up energy source
- Place two flood alarms in the basement that are connected to your alarm system and your phone. Affordable and worth it
- Make sure you understand your insurance coverage. Mine was capped at $10k so this was a very costly incident
Good News: After a couple days in a complete funk, I emerged emotionally and have moved on. I realized that the items were in the basement for a reason. I didn’t really need them. And I feel good about the basement moving forward. I also look at it as a great spring-cleaning project to get rid of things I don’t need. And I probably don’t need that poster of Van Halen.
