Dan & Ness

The house we are renting is old-ish and kinda crappy. This was even more apparent several weeks ago when during a particularly big storm the power went out (granted, no real fault of the house) and water started coming up from the ground and leaking in through the living room floor (which thankfully is tiled). At the time I mopped it fairly frequently and it was fine the next day.

Unfortunately this was repeated again on Monday evening, when a huge and deadly thunderstorm hit Houston. It started Monday afternoon and, what do you know, we lost power for a few hours. It came back on and there were no water leaks though, so we went to bed. About 3am it started up ferociously, hardcore thunder and lightning that I haven’t seen for a long time, and sooooooo much rain. We woke up from the noise and the lightning, and went to check on the leak situtation. Not good. Water was again coming through the floor in the living room, and this time much more faster. We also had water coming up through the floor in the kitchen pantry and into the kitchen, as well as a dripping coming in from the bedroom door that leads to the outside, ie right on to the bedroom carpet.

The water in the living room was really starting to come in though. Dan started to mop it but, lo and behold, the power went off yet again (about 3.30am). We had a torch but there really wasn’t much point trying to keep mopping, so Dan and I moved all of the furniture out of the room (including our newly arrived treadmill which Dan had only just assembled several hours before!). And put a bucket under the drip in the bedroom. In the morning we were greeted with a living room covered with 1-2 inches of water. So thankful we moved all of the stuff. We obviously both did not work on Tuesday. We called the landlord, who was going to send someone over. The power came back on at about 11am. At about 3pm the landlord and some guys came around and wetvacc-ed up all the water. During this time I also discovered that water had seeped into our bedroom via the floor or lower wall right next to our bed, so the bed base and mattress were partly damp. Gross. Our neighbour was having the exact same problem as us, except they had carpet in the living room   They said there was much more rain this time than during Ike. It was not a good day, but thankful it was not worse.