The 100 Year Flood

 

Well, it's finally here.  The 100 year flood, that has supposed to be coming through Boulder for several years now, arrived last night. There are roads that have washed away, hundreds have been evacuated and there's been a lot of damage. Being east of Boulder, it has not been as bad out here, but we did have some problems last night. We walked into one of the basement bedrooms and found that the carpet was wet. Ben came over and helped move all the furniture out of the room. Once that was out, we discovered that there is a crack in the wall that goes from the window to the floor that had water flowing out of it. It literally was like a little water fall running down the wall.

 There is also a similar crack in the basement bathroom. There was also 1/2 inch of water in the bathroom

So, we went outside to investigate, in the pouring rain, what was going on and discovered that we had 3 inches of standing water outside of both windows. I didn't get a picture at that point, but you can imagine what a 3 inch deep pool of water looks like. We came around the corner of the house and then end of the walkway pictured below was 3 inches deep

It was 3 inches deep here by the bedroom window where Ben and I began dumping sand to try and divert the water away from the house. Which kind of worked, but there was a lot of water to move. So dad and Ben started to dig a trench to create a low point an get water flowing away from the house. 

Then Jesse came and we dug more trenches

This corner was more also 3 inches deep all the way under the deck to the bathroom window. 

We were able to get the water flowing out from under there and create a small ridge of mud/dirt/sand to help keep the water out. 

Here's what the trenching looks like now. We took out part of a patio and dug 6-8 inch deep trenches along the sides of the patio all the way to the grass. It was a muddy, rainy process but we managed to stop more water from going into the house.

Here's the basement now. We used a carpet cleaner to suck water out of the carpet and then we pulled it up and it's got fans blowing on it trying to get it dry. 

Thanks Ben and Jesse for coming and rescuing us last night!!! I love that you both live so close. You are awesome!!!