I Give Up !

Not only do we have no hot water, it seems our basement flooded. We don't use our basement it's only there because we live on a hill and so needed to put it in, it's partial, cement floor and used mainly for storage. When I went down on Thursday to check about the hot water tank, the pan beneath was full of water. The rug at the bottom of the stairs was soaked, so I checked to make sure the drainage outside the door into the stairwell was clear and it was. My conclusion was that the tank had a leak and the way things are set out the rug could have been effected. Thankfully for some unknown reason my Mom decides to go down there today and the stairwell drainage is clogged or so we thought. After a long day of looking into things this is what happened.... The sump pump stopped working, basement flooded high enough to distinguish the pilot light on hot water tank, sump pump decided to work again and cement floor dried up, then stopped working but since it has also stopped raining there is not enough water in stairwell to flood basement. My brother who normally would look after this is away so his son in law was kind enough to come over and help out. We have a temporary pump going, stairwell now has no water, but we cannot get the pilot light on the hot water tank to work. He can get it on but it will not stay on, so we are hoping it needs to dry up some more. I will give it a try tomorrow morning and if not we will need to call in a repairman. The tank is 4 years old and under warranty so hopefully it won't cost much to fix. The sump pump has failed before and our basement has flooded, but never to the point of damaging anything.

As bad as this is for us, I miss my hot shower :) I know that others have it much worse because of the storms we have been having. Some use their basements for family rooms and if they flood so does all their carpeting and furniture, some have been without power for days, which means their food is going to waste and that could cost a small fortune.

It hasn't rained today so maybe this is the end of it, I sure hope so.

PS: Spoke too soon, not only is it raining this evening, there is lighting and thunder.