Expensive Flooding

We had a representative from DryBasements by this morning, to survey the situation in our flood-damaged lower floor. He believes the only practical solution is to install a backflow preventer and sump pump, neither of which currently exist in this house (due to it being 50-ish years old). Price tag for all of that: approximately $4400!

As part of the process, they'll be scoping out with a camera the drain line that overflowed in order to determine why it did so. We're hoping that the cause is revealed to be something broken by the city workers who dug the immense hole in our front yard this summer as part of their water line maintenance. Weeping tile damage seems to be a popular refrain that we hear, so I'm crossing my fingers that it's that. All we know is that we had 13 years without a drop of moisure in that part of the basement, then after the city ripped the crap out of our yard with a giant backhoe, suddenly we got an inch or more of water during the first heavy rain. If it does turn out to be something they did, then it'll come down to: will they cover our costs for dealing with it? If not, we're out the $4400 in addition to the $500 deductible on our house insurance that's paying for the carpet and drywall to be replaced, the pool table to be disassembled, stored and reassembled, as well as any other surprises still to come.

We're really on some kind of lousy roll as far as house maintenance is concerned. It's been almost non-stop since not long after I retired, in fact. I guess the universe is trying to tell me something!