All night long

Another example of the previous homeowners doing things a bit-less-than-up-to-code.

I was putting the little ones to sleep. Jake was putting the bigger kids to bed.

I hear a thump thump motorish sound. At first I thought it was our silly neighbor who revs his engines late into the night (yes, we have one of those). But it sounded too consistent, so I called to Jake to check it out.

I hear him stomp downstairs and a few minutes later he's back up, "The sump pump quit. I'm going to try to fix it."

Nearly two hours later, he has it all apart and realizes that the actual sump pump was buried in mud and could not be fixed. He had taken a gallon bucket and scooped out the water into two 5 gallon buckets he dumped outside. Six times he had to do this to get all the water out.

Our sump pump runs about every hour and a half. (I don't completely understand. See, the basement has a beaver system (like drain tiles) that empties into the sump pump. But the sump pump hole, about 4 feet down, hits mud and water seeps in which the pump has to pump out. To me, closing up the pump would take care of that problem, but then I guess the beaver system would not have anyplace to drain to.)

Aaaanyway, Jake came to bed and set his alarm for an hour and half later so he could go empty it again. 60 gallons. Up the stairs. Outside. Took him 45 minutes.

Back to bed for another 90 minutes.

Back downstairs to 60 more gallons.

Ridiculous.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Of course we were coming on Sunday morning so nothing was open until 8am.

One more time.

He arrived at Home Depot at 8am sharp.

He came home before the 90 mintures were up (I told him it was very unlikely that I'd start hauling buckets!) and installed a new sump pump. The right way. With a layer of gravel. A container for the pump to sit in with drain holes. More gravel. A beautiful job, really.

And it takes the sump pump 60 seconds to empty the water.

We're focusing on the bright side: that we caught it, the basement didn't flood, Jake was able to take a well-deserved Sunday nap rather than stumble through work, and we have a nice new sump pump.

Nice work honey.