My dad's pretty smart

When my folks were here a couple of weeks ago, my dad talked quite a bit about water. He’s always been interested in water and water policy, and has always said that the good health we enjoy here in the US can be tied to our water supply getting cleaned up. In 2003 when SARS first made the news (remember SARS?), he said then that he’d bet real money that the spread of SARS would end up being traced to contaminated water in Hong Kong. He was right.

As you might remember from your college science classes, our planet is pretty much a closed system (opens as a PDF). The various components we have are what we’ve got to work with, and that includes water. I’ve always been puzzled how it is that some places run out of water when the amount of water stays roughly the same.

But when Dad was here a couple of weeks ago, he pointed out what happens when people drink from a bottle—whether it’s water or soda or juice—and don’t finish the bottle. What do you do? You put the cap back on, right? And toss the bottle with the remaining water or liquid trapped inside. So that water is effectively removed from our system. Multiply that by a bazillion people around the world who drink bottled drinks and you can see how our closed system might be losing water.

I knew my dad was a smart cookie but I have to say that simple comment about capping bottles* opened my eyes.


I started thinking about the vegetable waste we’ve been tossing in the trash—that vegetable waste is full of moisture and we haven’t been letting it get back into the system. We don’t put it down the disposal because our kitchen sink plumbing has a severe hairpin turn under the floor of our basement, and we’ve clogged the snot out of that pipe with predictably disgusting results. So we’ve been tossing carrot peels, strawberry tops, and all the rest of that kind of stuff in the trash.

Ready for the compost bin

So a day or so after my folks returned home, I started carting those bits of vegetable matter out to the closest of the three compost bins in our backyard. Now I will say, the previous owner did a lot of gardening and she clearly used those compost bins (and took the compost with her when she moved). We, on the other hand, have done nothing with them. I’m not sure we’ll do anything with the resulting compost except think of it as a buffet for the bunnies and squirrels in our yard. But at least this way, that moisture from the vegetable rubbish will be back in our closed system.


*The water bottle in the photo is probably four years old. I refill it every night and use it to fill up the cat fountain.

Necessity and all that

We finally have no more industrial fans and dehumidifiers in our apartment, but it’s not because the walls are dry. They are not.

To solve the problem of the remaining wet drywall, Bostonian cut another large hole in the wall and physically removed some of the wettest bits. This picture shows you how we’ve covered the hole (to keep curious cats named Wally from getting between the wall and bricks) yet still allowed air to flow. We got that box from Ikea and you can see we just used duct tape to hold the lid in place. But it still smells wet where that hole is so this morning I stuck our little fan in the box, pointed it at the hole and turned it on high. No mold for me, thanks, I’m trying to cut back.

We are still dealing with a lot of dust in here. We’ve swept several times but I think that’s a losing battle until the floors are put back in. The concrete is old and isn’t sealed so dust is just a way of life right now.

Also, I probably should have worn my noise canceling ear buds all week long. My ears are still messed up from all the racket we had in here for a week. Hopefully the ringing subsides quickly.

I was deleting files from an SD card and ran across this video of Wally and Eddie which was taken last May when our second set of floors had just been installed. I find it comforting—this too, shall pass, and in the meantime Kent and I are doing well, the kitties are doing better than they were, and at some point we’ll have floors that stick around longer than eight months.

The Boston version of a casserole

Most of our neighbors contributed to this gift bag which one of them brought by tonight:

It's got three bottles of wine, a bottle of Tums, a bottle of Advil and a box of chocolates. That was super sweet and made our night. We didn't open the wine yet but we will, although maybe we should save it for during reconstruction.

Guess who didn't contribute? Yes, readers, if you said the Nasties and the Ferals, you'd be right!

Stress fractures

Stress fractures can be caused by unusual or repeated stress. I’d say repeated water damage counts, wouldn’t you?

• All horizontal surfaces in our home are covered with a fine layer of gritty dust. That won’t be going away any time soon. In fact, when the repairs get going, I know it will just get worse.
• The cats are not doing all that well. Chloe escapes by sleeping in the bedroom (we have that door shut both for noise mitigation and to keep as much dusty crap out of there as we can). Wally and Eddie have been crying loudly at us and it’s truly amazing how loud they can be. All three cats are on our laps for extended periods of time, far more than they normally do. Plus Chloe is picking fights with the boys. I’m sure it’s because she’s so tense.
• Wally has been doing something he loved to do in the basement of our home in Kansas City. He'd go down there and just roll around and around on the concrete. I think he's a little happy he can do that here because he's been doing it a lot. The downside is that his fur has gotten very dusty. I need to wipe him down with a damp washcloth because I can hardly bear to pet him, he's so dusty. 
• I feel short in the kitchen. I’m surprised at how removing the inch of flooring makes such a difference in where the counters are to me.
• Our apartment is crazy dry right now—the humidity is 32%. Our sinuses ache and our eyes are dried out and gritty.
• I thought of two things to be thankful about this go round. First, we discovered the issue Thursday. That meant we could get the leak capped on Friday and we have this week to start sorting out repairs and so on. Second, I’ve been planning on doing a lot of touch up painting around the place, but hadn’t done it yet. Good thing, huh.
• We are both so distracted that we both clean forgot about the red slow cooker sitting on the counter last night, full of a new batch of chili. I woke up at 5 AM and knew it had been sitting there all night long. I need to make another batch of soup (that’s what we eat for lunch in the winters) but we have no more white onions in the house. So I need to go get one.
• Apparently I tweaked my knee the other day so now I’m feeling ancient and decrepit.
• I’m looking forward to sitting on a beach in just over a week. I just hope nothing bad happens here while we are gone.

Loud and noisy

Unless you've been through a fire or water damage situation, it's hard to picture how dirty and messy things get. When the restoration guys tore down part of the ceiling yesterday, all sorts of wet, soggy moldy debris fell down too. Now everything is coated in dust, there's grit and bits of concrete everywhere and of course it smells weird here. Not water weird, we got things out fast enough, but just weird and not at all like home.

This video is probably quite loud but since I'm in the apartment with the fans and dehumidifier and air purifier going (great big industrial beasts they all are too), I can't hear it. You'll have to tell me if the noise comes through in the video.

I've been here before

No sewing today :-(

You can see how far the water seeped under the floors.
It's wet in the bedroom and kitchen also. 

Lots of holes in the ceiling to track the pipe back to its source.

He's a big boy now

I turned the tub faucet on this morning, pulled the shower curtain back and let Eddie have at it.



What a goober cat.

Eddie loves water

Anytime either of us even walks near the bathroom, Eddie runs in and perches on the back of the toilet. He's hoping we'll turn on the sink water faucet.

The Duke of Earl

We've been following the 5-day forecast of Hurricane Earl as it moves up the eastern seaboard. Between the National Weather Service web site and Weather Underground, a weather junkie can get lots of information. I'd really hoped Earl would move out to the Atlantic before getting this far north but it looks as though that's not the case.

Since we're on tap to get heavy rain tomorrow, Kent arranged to have the gravel for the parking spots delivered yesterday. We're fortunate to have a good friend, Scott, who is a civil engineer. He gave us lots of good advice on how to address our water issue so Kent ordered 4 1/2 cubic yards of gravel.


In the first picture, you can see the boards Kent added to the bottom of our fence. Those boards act as braces for the gravel and should also help the water stay out of our patio. Also notice how bare the ground is--what little gravel was there before got washed away last October when that water main broke.

The second picture shows the gate with that brace board. We have about a four inch step down now with all the gravel in the parking spots. Notice too our lovely Hydra Barriers! I don't care what color they are, those things definitely help. 

You can see what five tons of gravel looks like in the third picture. We don't have any normal-sized yard tools anymore; we have a couple of tools that collapse down because there's just no need for the real deal. Unless you are spreading five tons of gravel.

And it's all spread out in that last picture.








By design, we did not buy enough gravel to cover the entire lot. We got enough to cover the fence along our property line and you can see where the gravel ends--that's the end of our property. We did offer to have more gravel brought in for the other garden unit if he wanted to do the same (and pay for his share) but he said no.

Normally the condo association would pay for something like this but due to other, ongoing issues, we knew that wasn't going to happen for a long time. Frankly we didn't think waiting another year would do anything other than stress us out. We've spent under $500 (gravel: $240; Hydra Barriers: $75; and wood for those braces: $30), which is plenty but as the MasterCard commercial says, the ultimate result (less stress) is priceless.

Tonight we'll cut open contractor-grade trash bags, duct tape them together to form a large flat drop cloth and lay them on the patio bricks near the exterior walls. Hopefully that will reduce the water seepage in through our still-unrepaired foundation.

Should work

We've plotted out how to keep water out of our patio when we get the fortunately rare torrential rains. The first step was putting in boards along the outside of our fence down at the bottom. We will be grading the parking spots and hauling in gravel to help mitigate the slope from the alley to our patio.

Yesterday, Kent started on another part of the project by pulling up the rotted railroad ties and putting in stones instead.

Dancing in the rain

We had torrential rain today. But this was the first chance to see if the Hydra Barriers helped at all. You'll see in this short video that the water reaches the bottom of the gate--without our lovely orange plastic tubes, all that water probably would have overwhelmed the drain again. I think we got our $70 worth today.

Cool boxes, not cool damage

First a little video that shows off our new litter box storage solution.



And second, a couple of pictures of the water damage from our nor'easter I mentioned.

Demolition is mostly done

I took these four short videos yesterday that show what's left.

Videos!

I posted a couple of these on Facebook but I'm still going to post them here. I took three videos so they wouldn't be too large to upload. The noise you hear are the huge fans and dehumidifiers going non-stop.





You'll hear me laugh in this one because I tripped over a trash can. I thought maybe I'd stumbled onto a Three Stooges movie.

More water feature pictures

Your eyes are not deceiving you, the rug is floating. It protected the coffee table because while the legs got wet, the rest of the table stayed dry. The high water mark was between 18 and 24 inches, although that's not what you see in these pictures. We have or rather we had very tall baseboards, about a foot tall, and the water was way over the top of the baseboards. These pictures were all taken after the water had started receding.


Kent took this and the following picture while it was still somewhat light outside. The water got to the top of the bottom stair, which is an abnormally tall stair (the rest of the stairs are normal, it's just the last step that's a doozy).

This is looking in from our back door.

You can see how much dry wall has been removed. It's this way throughout the entire apartment, and of course the flooring is gone, also any insulation plus all the baseboards.

Miscellaneous thoughts in the midst of drying out

First, I am so very glad we had water and not sewage in our apartment. The water came from a water main under the intersection of Columbus Avenue and Claremont Park, about 75 yards from our building—so it was relatively clean. I’m sure we got a lot of street grime and oil and dog poop/pee, but we didn’t have floating human sewage or that kind of smell.

The main that broke was a 31” pipe and it created a huge sink hole as you can see. The city of Boston has been working there around the clock since the main broke Wednesday afternoon.

Second, it’s amazing how much damage just 18 inches of water can do. Our stove is fried, our freezer got water in it, as did the dishwasher. We are pretty sure the hot water heater is fried, and also our washer/dryer unit.

All our furniture is damaged, most considered beyond repair. We’ve asked that four pieces be restored because they can’t really be replaced: the coffee table and end tables that came from my mother, and the amazing armoire my mother-in-law gave us. Our bed frame will probably be OK because it’s metal but I won’t hesitate to toss it should it either rust or smell.

I have three pairs of shoes right now because I stored mine under the bed and in the bottom drawer of a dresser. Edited to add: the surviving shoes are a pair of running shoes, another pair of athletic shoes and my black knee-high patent leather boots.

Third, if you don’t have insurance on the contents of your home please reconsider that decision. Our insurance company is being amazingly helpful and all our clothing and shoes have been sent out for cleaning and possible recovery. Our next door neighbor didn’t have insurance on his contents, even though he’s a home owner.

The cats are finally a little calmer and that’s thanks to the kindness of a couple in our building. Tony and Peter also have a house in Providence and Wednesday evening they offered us the use of this home for the duration of our rebuilding process. That offer and their kindness really got to me and I admit I cried. So we are here in Providence—we drove down Thursday evening so we could get the kitties settled as soon as possible. They were still very freaked out Thursday evening but last night was a lot better.

Boo

I saw this snail in the window well this morning and wanted to grab a picture of it. Then I noticed the paint peeling off the side of the window well. Looks like we've had enough rain that the hydrostatic pressure is pushing the paint right off the concrete.