Recently our house flooded, again.
We live in a style of house known as a 'high set', which means 'house on stilts'. Lots of people do in this city, although I had never heard the term until I moved here to the flood prone sub tropics.
As years go by, homeowners generally think 'blast this mud, I'll concrete under the house. Keep the car from getting bogged & give the kiddies somewhere to play'. A few years later the next home owner will say 'I'll just put some walls on downstairs, keep the bogan neighbours from stealing the washing machine & stop the dog running away while I'm at bowls'.
All this is well & good, but what it means is that an awful lot of houses have evolved 'downstairs' that have been created with shoddy workmanship & no council approval. No building standards adhered to, no thought given to things like legal ceiling height or drainage, for heavens sake.
This is why we have installed so much drainage in our yard, in an attempt to stop the water flowing straight into the house through the many nooks & crannys, & even up through the cracks in the slab. Money budgeted for the new kitchen has been spent on the drainage. *frowns, purses lips*
The first time this happened was a nightmare - 5 boxes of magazines (Architectural Digest & Martha Stewart Living, mainly. I know.) Boxes of text books, all thrown away.
I wept then & am still trying to salvage Teenage Daughter's baby photos & keepsakes. A moment of silence, please.
By now, we have the routine well sorted;
- Marburg Radar Tracker on the laptop? check
- 'Flood towels' at the usual points of water entry? check
- Move anything in the path of the water? check
- Get the sandbags into position...
- Check on the neighbours..
We are about to have a new fence installed, which will hopefully help. After Mr BC has created the new kitchen I will start trawling the internet for an Ark Building Tutorial. With proper planning we should be able to complete this before the arrival of the 6 cyclones that have been forcasted for this summer. Please not at once..
This last storm was a doozy - 50 houses evacuated a few suburbs over, a landslip in the middle of a street a suburb in the other direction.
This house of chaos should probably just count its blessings.
Mrs BC
xx
