Our garage has had water issues. The ground outside the side garage door heaves up in the winter which channels all the snow melt into the garage. We discovered this last spring when things started to melt and we thought it was fixed but alas, it is not. Not too long ago we had a warm-up where snow started melting and the water came in, so we sandbagged the area to try to keep out as much as possible.
Yesterday the sun was out and while the air temperature was below freezing, the sun on the snow made it start to melt. I checked the garage at 3:30 in the afternoon and it was dry. Now, sometime between then and when I checked it again at 8:00, the snow and ice decided to defy the laws of nature and start to melt even though the sun had gone down and the temperature was well below freezing. This snow melt then decided that it just had to take up residence in my garage.
When I checked the garage again at 8:00 the drainage well was overflowing. Now this well, or "the pit" as I call it, doesn't drain out anywhere. It just collects the water and then we have to either let it evaporate or suck it up with a shop-vac. Since it was overflowing that meant shop-vac time. The water was still coming in so I knew I'd have to go back out there and empty it. I did this again 9;30 and then again at 11:00. If you look up the definition of NOT FUN, you will find sucking up icy cold water with a shop vac and dumping it outside away from the house.
At 11:00 the snow melt was still in full-on party in my garage mode, so I knew I'd have to go back down and take care of it in a few hours. I set my phone timer for 2 hours and tried to get what sleep I could, which wasn't much. I am truly grateful for the fact that my children, once they are finally asleep, will sleep like the dead until morning because at 1:00 AM I was up running the shop-vac right under their rooms. At this point the water had pretty much stopped so I set the timer for 4 hours in hopes that I could get some sleep.
5:15 rolled around and my timer went off but I could not get out of bed. At that point I didn't get a damn whether the garage was filled with water or not. I had slept horribly because I was worried about the garage. I reset the timer for an hour, my usual wake-up time for school days. I managed to pry myself out of bed then and get the kids ready for school. It's good I had planned ahead and arranged for the kids to have lunch at school today so I didn't have to do much for their lunches.
Once they were on the school bus I drank my morning tea, ate some breakfast, and then climbed back into bed with the alarm set to wake me up around 9:30. At that point I got up and went out to clear away all the slushy, icy mess that was between the door and the sandbags. It took some ice melt and a lot of chipping and scraping, but I cleared the frozen slush away from the door. My arms and back are still complaining about what I did to them today but at least I got the area cleared.
Most of the day the garage was dry. Then as we were leaving for soccer I noticed that water was slowly starting to seep in again. I was like WTF? Then I realized it is probably water inside the sandbags melting or most likely it is the snow/ice where our trash cans sit that is melting and running down along the side of the house. I did have to do more vacuuming when we got back from soccer because the water was still coming in and my car was covered in snow. Yeah, it started effing snowing while we were in soccer. Thankfully it's only suppose to be no more than 2 cm so it I can deal with it.
That was at 6:00ish that I emptied it and when I checked it again 2 hours later it wasn't full so that gave me hope that I might actually get some sleep tonight. I think what was in there was more from the car than the snow melt party in my side yard. I'll check it again before I go to bed. And come spring, when all this effing snow has melted we will have someone come and help us create a permanent solution to this problem. I have an idea but as I am not a professional I'm not sure my idea will work.
There were a few bright spots during the day. Tonight's hockey game was canceled because 5 players were sick. It will get rescheduled but at least it wasn't tonight when we had soccer. Also, the 6:15 AM practice for Friday has been canceled because they have a game that evening. That means I don't have to get up an hour earlier than usual to get J to hockey. And peanut butter eggs were on sale at the grocery store. I think after the night and day I have had I deserve a peanut butter egg.
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