The Housegleaners: A DIY Freestyle Fixerupper Remodel Blog Focused On Salvage, Reuse, and Upcycling

Is this necessary or even effective? Does pumping away 9,000 gallons of stormwater per hour make a difference, or is it instantly replaced via a hydrologic mechanism we don't understand? Are we bailing a boat with a hole in it? It's really hard to tell. We're just starting to get to learn the dynamics of this property. Sarah tested the soil and it drains OK--not great, but not terrible. And in normal times its absorption rate keeps up with the rain. But after a few days of persistent and increasing precip, the ground gets saturated, then add 4 more inches in 48 hours and a shallow pond manifests in our backyard. It's kind of pretty! Better to have too much pure fresh water than not enough. Even after the rain ceases, surface water from the surrounding hills will continue to trickle in, so part of the impetus to use the pump is to get ahead of this latency effect. But does it help? I ran it from 8am-5pm while it rained steadily all day. At times the standing water level ...

I already partly started tearing up the kitchen floor, the oldest part of this 1960 house. Beneath delaminated linoleum and a waterdamaged layer of 3/4" plywood, there were 3/4" shiplap boards for a subfloor, rotted through in spots (I found out when I stepped through a few), consequence of water damage from when frozen pipes burst two owners ago. But at least the floor in the kitchen is roughly level. In the living room, the floor dives down at the front wall. Telltale saggy ceiling suggests the foundation is subsiding. I'm surprised the large aluminum windows haven't cracked yet. I had a sneaking suspicion there was a problem with drainage under the front deck because in today's rain I heard water gurgling in the downspout but none was coming out the 4" PVC pipe sticking out from under the front edge of the deck, where it should have been trickling runoff onto the lawn but wasn't. The downspout disappeared into a hole in the deck. The only way to assess...