“If I were you,” said the voice on the other end of the telephone line, “I wouldn’t worry about that little bit of water in your basement. Doesn’t sound like any big deal to me.”
What a relief I felt to know that the trickle on the cellar floor was only a small problem, requiring only a minimum amount of time, work and money to remedy. I was glad because I don’t like spending money and I’m not particularly crazy about work. Especially hard work.
A number of simple solutions were suggested and I tried them. The trickle turned into a stream and the stream became a pool. I asked for more advice.
“If I were you, I’d take up that patio along the back of the house,” said the voice. “It has settled and is tipped in against your wall. That’s what’s directing the water into your cellar.”
The jackhammer and crowbar cost me only $50.29 to rent for one day. I shook myself silly Friday night and Saturday but by Sunday, my concrete patio was rubble. Monday it rained. The basement flooded.
“If I were you, I’d take up the sidewalk too,” said the voice.
Another $33.71 and six more shaky hours and the sidewalk lay in pieces. It rained. Outside and inside the house.
Where I used to have a wet basement, now I had three tons of broken concrete in my back yard – and a wet basement.
“You know, if I were you, I’d get one of those big blue steel bins delivered to your place to put the broken concrete in,” said you know who. I did. Cost me $52. Plus $22.79 rental on the heavy duty wheelbarrow to carry the concrete into the bin.
For eight hours, I worked harder than the men who built the pyramids, wheeling concrete from the back yard to the front.
As my water problem was concentrated along the back wall of the house, the suggestion was made that I dig down in one particular spot and see if there was a broken weeping tile. I did that, after I bought a new, heavy shovel, for $29.95. And a pair of rubber boots – $11.63. Gloves – $2.66.
Two days later, I’d shovelled several hundred pounds of clay away and stood in a hole five feet deep. No broken tile.
“It’s not my house, but if I were you,” said my adviser, “I’d dig down all along the back wall and check all the tiles. There might be roots in them or clay.”
So I went back to my digging but I soon realized the job was too much to do by hand. I realized it when I could not longer straighten my back or get out of bed in the morning.
I called up a backhoe operator. He told me it didn’t make sense to just do along the back wall. May as well dig up around the entire house.
“Go ahead,” I said. I was so tired, if he’d said it would be best to dig a hole in the back yard and bury the house, I would have said the same thing.
So, he dug with his big machine and I shovelled and by the end of an afternoon, the walls of my house were exposed, all the way down to the foundation along with the red clay tiles.
I paid him $160.
“To tell you the truth, if I were you,” said the voice that night, “I’d replace the old tile. Take ’em right out. Put down new black plastic perforated tile. And don’t forget to put plastic over those piles of dirt because if it rains heavy, those banks will cave in.”
The plastic to cover the banks which caved in three times anyway cost me $25.25 and the tile another $51.09. After hours of back-breaking digging and pulling, I got the old tile out. Put down the new tile.
No sense putting in tile without a couple of feet of drainage stone over top of it. One load, $95.16. Hours on the end of the shovel and wheelbarrow.
After a few more, If I Were Yous, this is what I’d spent: asphalt to patch the cracks in the walls, $23.43; trowel, $4.27; wheelbarrow rental, $7.60; finally smartened up and bought a wheelbarrow, $74.89; line level, $4.16; chalkline, $2.87; rental of power sprayer to clean the walls, $53.50; charge for getting walls sprayed with tar, $130; to have rubbish removed, $20; return of the backhoe to fill in the trenches, $76; dehumidifier for the basement, $342.39; rental of folding chairs for party to forget my troubles, $12.
When I woke up this spring, the grounds around my house looked like Beirut after a lively night.
Last weekend, I rented a rototiller to work up the soil – $43.87. It got away on me and one of its tines ripped through the bottom panel in my aluminum storm door. Probably $200 to replace the door.
The ground settled and I’m going to need topsoil: $150. Grass seed to repair lawn, $20. Who knows what a new patio and sidewalk will cost?
Today, I have a dry basement. There is $1,699.51 of my money sitting in the accounts of various businesses around the city. I get Christmas and birthday cards from the equipment rental place.
I’ve developed a permanent sigh and I cry easily.
My favourite expression is, “How much would that be?”
“You know, if I were you,” Mr. Advice said to me the other day, “I’d just be glad you were able to do the work yourself. Imagine if you had had to hire it all done.”
I was tempted to tell the caller to dry up but the last time I discussed the concepts of wet and dry with him, I got soaked.
©1987 Jim hagarty
