Water is great, until its not
I just finished reading an article about how the sale of bottled water is declining. Mostly due to people realizing that they can drink from the tap for a whole lot less money. It appears that during $4+ per gallon gasoline days, $4+ per gallon water is too much as well.
Water is great, until it’s not. About a year ago, I had the opportunity to clean out a flooded basement. The walls leak when it rains and the sump pump could not keep up. Actually, the pump could keep up, it’s just that the hose from the pump to the outside yard had a kink in it.
Since this happened in a house where no one lived continuously, the pump ran for days (weeks?) trying to pump out water through an opening the size of your average drinking straw. The water was coming in through various leaks in the walls about the size of your average fire hose.
Simple nuclear physics proves that water coming in a large opening can not be discharged through an opening 300 times smaller. At least, not without some other giant force of nature acting upon it.
So, by the time it was discovered, the water was 1.5 feet deep in the basement, the pump had been running continuously -to the point of being too hot to touch, the wood burning furnace was full of water and I am afraid of snakes (stayed tuned for more about snakes).
The hose issue was discovered and remedied fairly quickly, by unkinking it. Sort of like you do when you are washing the car and the hose gets twisted. The pump continued to run, only now it was much more effective. After about 10 hours, the water was down to just a 1/4″ deep or so.
Next began the joyous and day long process of removing 65 years’ of Grandpa’s junk that had accumulated in the basement. Not only was there a lot of junk, it was wet and molding.
Speaking of molding, the entire basement was turning into an 8th grade science project. Sort of like when the power went out and the refrigerator quit working for several days (weeks?). Not only did the mold take over, the frozen orange juice concentrate in the freezer unfroze. In some terrible freak of nature incident, the orange juice turned into – hold your nose and put the kids to bed here – maggots!
I don’t know how it happened, nor do I want to, but after several hours of pressure washing the fridge in the driveway to no avail, we threw it in the junk pile in the back of the barn.
But I digress.
So I learned that bleach or vinegar kill mold. I also learned that 8 gallons of vinegar are needed to kill all of the mold on the walls and ceiling of a basement. I also learned that the ceiling of a basement is also the bottom side of the floor. When the basement ceiling/floor floor is soaked to the point of being moldy, it doesn’t squeak.
What does any of this have to with the price of lobster in Amarillo? Not a thing. I was reminded of it this past week, however, watching the video and seeing the stories about the flooding in Iowa. I have friends and co-workers who are living through that nightmare as I write.
Homes washed up against the railroad bridge. Who knew a home could float? Not me. It is pretty amazing to see that water can do such damage, yet to think that we pay $1 or more for a bottle of it.
So, next time you are about to open a bottle of ACME brand water, or whatever, think of those people in Iowa and along the Mississippi River. Water is great, until it’s not.
