Water & more water

We have a lovely field across from us. It's very nice to look out over. Well, the past month or so the farmer has flooded/irrigated this field. Fine. Except as he does this, the water runs across the street & fills up our basement.

We have a sump pump put in by our builder. It never ran until June. Then it seemed to run all the time. Then we started getting some water along the north side of our house. Todd put another sump pump into a hole outside. Our problem seemed to be solved, as long as our pumps worked.

Last week the power shorted out for the basement pump & our basement had some standing water. Todd called a wet basement specialist & we are set up for yet another pump, this one will be higher quality with battery backup & other goodies. The company is also going to dig a trench of some sort in our foundation & our problem should be solved (it had better be!!!). I'm not looking forward to this next week, but at least it's next week, not now since I'm attempting to get things ready for Mitchell's blessing on Sunday.

This is our next door neighbor's driveway when the farmer flooded about 10 days ago. He does not want to landscape since part of his yard frequently gets flooded. He's talked to the farmer who told him this was not his problem, his family has been on this land for years & it's not his fault that our neighborhood floods. Our neighbor has also talked to the city about getting better storm drains, but has gotten nowhere with them.

The kids think the floods are great!
Today the farmer was flooding again. Our basement pump was working fine. The outside one had been working most of the morning, but must have stopped sometime around 10 or so. I'd been downstairs at 8 am & things were fine (a little damp in one spot, but nothing bad).

At noon I went down to get something & found this. At the bottom of our stairs there was about 1 1/2 inch deep standing water that was spreading throughout the basement.

The kids thought it was great fun to ride wiggle racers through the water. I was not too thrilled since we had a stack of boxes down there that were soaking up water.
I got a hold of Todd, who luckily was having a light work day, & was able to hurry home.

The wet basement guy was stopping by to get a check from me, so I showed him our new fun, just so he could make sure they get whatever they are doing next week right. He was able to get the outside pump working for me so the basement would stop filling up.

I got the kids up to a neighbor's house, as planned earlier. Then, instead of taking a nap like I really needed, I moved boxes. Nothing was too soaked yet, which was good.
This is where our outside pump drains, right down our front yard (also the lovely field across the street). Too bad we can't somehow collect the water to water the entire lawn, it's some good water!